Laura Biester
About
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Middlebury College. I am teaching Natural Language Processing (CSCI 0457) and Introduction to Computing (CSCI 0145) in Spring 2025. My research interests are at the intersection of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computational Social Science. My Ph.D. thesis focused on modeling change in language over time for individuals with depression, primarily using social media data. I have also done work on perspectivism in NLP, bias in language, and Clinical NLP. I completed my Ph.D. in 2023 at the University of Michigan, and earned my B.A. in computer science from Carleton College in 2016. I have also spent time in industry, including a summer as an intern IBM Research working on Clinical NLP and two years as a full-time software engineer at Pinterest working on database systems.
Research Performance Summary
First Recorded Paper
Quantifying the effects of COVID-19 on mental health support forums
Year: 2020
Citations: 30
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on NLP for COVID-19 (Part 2) at EMNLP 2020
Latest Recorded Paper
Representing and Clustering Errors in Offensive Language Detection
Year: 2025
Citations: 0
Venue: Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of
Last 10 Years Publication Activity
This timeline shows the professor's yearly publication activity.