Mark Liberman

Mark Liberman is a Trustee Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, holding appointments in the Department of Linguistics and Department of Computer and Information Science. He serves as Director of the Linguistic Data Consortium and Faculty Director of Ware College House. His career spans linguistics, speech technology, and computational methods.

• Education: Harvard University (1965-1969), MIT (M.S. 1972, Ph.D. 1975)
• Professional Experience: AT&T Bell Laboratories (1975-1990), University of Pennsylvania (1990-present)

His research interests include:

• Corpus-based Phonetics: Analyzing speech patterns via large-scale datasets.
• Clinical Applications: Developing speech biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases.
• Tonal Phonology: Studying lexical tone and intonation in languages like Yoruba and Mandarin.
• Formal Annotation Models: Creating frameworks for linguistic data standardization.

Recent publications highlight automated speech analysis, cross-linguistic prosody, and digital biomarkers for conditions like ALS-FTD and Alzheimer’s. His collaborations span computational linguistics, neurology, and cognitive science.

Scientific awards include the IEEE James L. Flanagan Award (2017), Antonio Zampolli Prize (2010), and fellowships from the AAAS and Linguistic Society of America.

He advises PhD students May Chan and Jonathan Him Nok Lee and contributes to editorial boards for journals like Cognition and Annual Review of Linguistics. His work bridges speech science, language technology, and neurocognitive research.