Smaranda Muresan

Smaranda Muresan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is also an Affiliate Faculty in Columbia's Department of Computer Science and a member of the Data Science Institute (DSI). Her research focuses on human-centric Natural Language Processing (NLP) for social good and responsible computing, emphasizing theory-guided and knowledge-aware computational models for understanding and generating language in diverse contexts. Key research areas include argument mining, fact-checking, figurative language processing, multilingual NLP for low-resource languages, and explainable AI.

Before joining Barnard in 2024, she was a Research Scientist at Columbia's Data Science Institute and a faculty member at Rutgers University's School of Communication and Information, where she co-founded the Laboratory for the Study of Applied Language Technologies and Society. She earned a Distinguished Achievements in Research Award during her time at Rutgers.

Muresan has led significant grants, including NSF-funded projects on fine-grained visual classification with text and images, and reducing STEM achievement gaps using NLP. She is also a Technical Lead in DARPA's DEFT Program for detecting contradictions in text and speech.

Her teaching includes undergraduate and graduate courses in NLP, multilingual technologies, and computational models of social meaning. She actively contributes to professional activities, including workshops on figurative language processing and argument mining.