Jonathan May

Jonathan May is a Research Associate Professor at the University of Southern California (USC) and a Principal Scientist at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI). He leads the Center for Useful Techniques Enhancing Language Applications Based on Natural And Meaningful Evidence (CUTELY-BASED), focusing on advancing natural language processing (NLP) through empathetic chatbots for reducing online toxicity, strategic gameplay agents for collaboration/competition, and interactive knowledge management systems.

Education:

• B.S.E., Computer Science Engineering, University of Pennsylvania
• M.S.E., Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania
• Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Southern California

Dr. May’s research expertise spans computational linguistics, AI, and NLP. His work emphasizes architecture development for NLP, human-machine interaction, multilinguality, and transfer learning. He has also explored computational journalism and knowledge management frameworks, contributing to both academic and applied domains.

Scientific Awards:

• Outstanding Paper Award (twice)
• Best Demo Award

May has organized multiple NLP workshops and conferences, including service roles in academic events. He currently serves as Treasurer of NAACL (North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics) and is an Amazon Scholar, bridging academic research with industry applications.

Labs & Teams: Dr. May is affiliated with the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at USC and collaborates with Amazon as a Scholar.