Martha E. Pollack

Post-Doctoral Fellowship Available

Education:

Ph.D.,   University of Pennsylvania    1986  (Computer & Information Science)

M.S.E., University of Pennsylvania    1984  (Computer & Information Science)

A.B.,     Dartmouth College summa cum laude        1979 (Linguistics)

Research Interests:

I'm interested in all sorts of questions having to do with the interaction between people, and information, and technology, but I have a particular interest in computer-based technology that can assist people with cognitive impairment, enabling them to live more autonomous lives.  I have led the design and prototyping of such systems, and I testified on the importance of Assistive Technology for Cognition before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Aging.

Of course, good applied research is based on good foundational research, and my students and I have done a significant amount of work on several key areas of Artificial Intelligence, including temporal constraint-based reasoning and automated plan generation, and adaptive interfaces, each of which plays an important role in assistive technology.  More recently we have also been quite interested in wireless sensors for activity recognition, another enabling technology for AT.  Early in my research career, I worked in the area of natural-language processing, focusing on discourse analysis and automated question-answering.