Mari Ostendorf

Mari Ostendorf serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering within the College of Engineering at the University of Washington, where she conducts research at the intersection of speech technology and computational linguistics with emphasis on spontaneous speech phenomena.

Her educational foundation includes:

• PhD in an unspecified field, Stanford University (1985)

Her research program systematically investigates:

• Speech Processing: Specializing in spontaneous speech characteristics and prosodic modeling
• Natural Language Processing: Focusing on conversational speech parsing and stance analysis
• Computational Linguistics: Integrating linguistic theory with machine learning approaches
• Prosody: Analyzing idiosyncratic speech patterns for language processing applications
• Stance Recognition: Developing computational methods for identifying speaker attitude and commitment

Her work manifests in significant projects including the LiCORICE Project (2009-2011) as Principal Investigator and the ATAROS Project as Co-Principal Investigator, both advancing automatic spoken language processing through detailed modeling of speech prosody and stance phenomena.

Analysis of her publication record reveals a consistent trajectory toward interdisciplinary integration of linguistic theory and machine learning for spoken language understanding, with particular emphasis on non-lexical cues and discourse markers in conversational contexts that bridge computational and cognitive approaches to language processing.

No scientific awards were mentioned in the provided documentation.

Her advising record includes PhD candidates Jeremy Kahn (2010 dissertation on conversational speech parsing) and Esther Le Grézause (2017 dissertation on stance expression). Her grant portfolio features the LiCORICE Project (2009-2011, PI with Emily M. Bender and Mark Zachry) and the ATAROS Project (Co-PI with Richard Wright and Gina Levow), demonstrating sustained research funding in speech technology.

Her research operates within an interdisciplinary framework connecting computer science and linguistics, evidenced by collaborations spanning departments and contributions to dissertation defenses in the Linguistics program at the University of Washington.