Lasha Abzianidze

Dr. Lasha Abzianidze is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University's Department of Languages, Literature and Communication (Faculty of Humanities). He is affiliated with the Institute for Language Sciences, contributing to the Logic, Language, Information group and Computational Linguistics group. His research focuses on NLP, computational semantics, and formal reasoning systems like LangPro, a tableau-based theorem prover for NLI. He co-leads the Parallel Meaning Bank (PMB) project for semantically annotated corpora and the NALOMA workshop series. He holds a PhD from Tilburg University (2017), with earlier roles as a postdoc in the PMB and ROCKY projects, and lectureships at the University of Groningen. His expertise includes semantics, NLP, computational linguistics, and human-centered AI.

Education: PhD in Linguistics (Tilburg University, 2017); Double MSc in Language & Communication Technologies (Charles University & University of Lorraine); BSc in Pure Mathematics (Tbilisi State University).

Research Interests: Natural Language Inference (NLI), formal semantics, theorem proving, cross-lingual semantic annotation, and explainable AI. Current projects include explainable natural language reasoning via the NWO XS grant and developing spatial reasoning datasets like SpaceNLI. His work bridges logic-based methods with deep learning, emphasizing transparent and interpretable systems.

Grants & Supervision: Holder of an NWO XS grant (2023) for explainable NLI research. Supervises AI master's theses, favoring students from his courses on formal languages and NLP. Involved in teaching courses like 'Reasoning with Natural Language' and 'Machine Learning for Vision and Language'.

Labs/Teams: Leads the NALOMA workshop series and contributes to the PMB project. Active in the Computational Linguistics group at ILS, collaborating on semantic parsing tools like CCGweb and LangPro. His work integrates logic-based reasoning with modern NLP techniques to advance explainable AI systems.