Yevgeni Berzak

Yevgeni Berzak is an Assistant Professor at the Technion and a Research Affiliate at Mit BCS. He directs the Technion Language, Computation and Cognition (LaCC) Lab and leads the Cognitive Science Track in the Data Science and Engineering degree at the Technion.

His academic background includes:

• PhD in Computer Science at Infolab, MIT CSAIL
• Postdoctoral research with Roger Levy at MIT CPL Lab
• Masters in Computational Linguistics at Universities of Saarland and Nancy
• Bachelors in Cognitive Science and Amirim Honors Program at Hebrew University of Jerusalem

His research focuses on the intersection of Cognitive Science and Natural Language Processing (NLP), studying human language acquisition and processing through computational modeling, linguistic theory, and neuroimaging. He develops datasets like OneStopQA and CELER, and explores how human gaze patterns can improve machine language understanding.

Recent publications address topics such as:

• Eyetracking for language proficiency assessment
• Repetition effects in reading behavior
• Readability prediction via scrolling interactions
• Structured annotation schemes for reading comprehension

The LaCC Lab under his leadership combines theoretical linguistics with machine learning to bridge human and artificial language processing.