Casey Kennington

Casey Kennington, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Boise State University. He specializes in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Robotics, and Human-Robot Interaction. His research focuses on dialogue systems, language model learning, and embodied AI, with a particular emphasis on creating practical applications for educational and healthcare contexts. He leads the Speech, Language, & Interactive Machines (SLIM) research group.

Education: B.S. in Computer Science from Brigham Young University, M.Sc. in Computational Linguistics (Saarland University, Germany) and Cognitive Science (University of Lorraine, France), and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Bielefeld University, Germany.

Research Interests: Developing language models for efficiency and interpretability, multimodal learning, and improving accessibility of NLP tools for children. His work bridges theory and application, with projects like HADREB (emotional robot behaviors) and KidSpell (child-focused spellchecking).

Key Contributions: NSF CAREER Award recipient, creator of the AI Science degree program at Boise State, and developer of the SLIM group's dialogue systems. His publications span computational linguistics, robotics, and educational technology.

• Grants & Awards: National Science Foundation CAREER Award (research on language models and dialogue systems).
• Teaching: Courses in NLP, Deep Learning, and Data Science.
• Labs/Teams: Leads the SLIM Group, advancing research in interactive dialogue systems and robot communication.