Tal August

Tal August is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Siebel School of Computing and Data Science. His research focuses on adapting language to improve communication between humans and technology, emphasizing personalized language systems for science, health, and legal domains. He holds a PhD from the University of Washington (Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering), advised by Katharina Reinecke and Noah Smith.

Research Interests:

• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI): Designing tools that bridge communication gaps through language adaptation.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP): Developing AI systems for automatic language personalization.
• Science Communication: Studying how language affects knowledge sharing in technical domains.
• Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Breaking down barriers through tailored communication strategies.

Awards: Honored on the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students (2025). Recognized for contributions to personalized language tools via grants from the Allen Institute for AI.

Advising & Grants: Recruiting 1-2 PhD students for Fall 2025. Recent grant supported work on personalizing research literature searches for scholars.

Courses Taught: CS 598 TAL - Language, Interfaces, and Communication (focuses on HCI/NLP intersections).

Key Projects: Innovations include TermSight (simplifying legal contracts), Qlarify (expandable scientific summaries), and Semantic Reader (AI-augmented reading interfaces).