Allie Lahnala

I am a natural language processing (NLP) researcher focusing on computational social science and conversation dynamics in goal-oriented settings and interpersonal interactions involving particular social intents, such as persuasion and offering support. I work with various domains and contexts, such as online forums for supportive and opinionated interactions, and clinical conversations, in which I investigate stance dynamics and empathetic interactions, and transfer learning to better model social NLP tasks. I am also interested in developing theory-driven empathy research approaches for NLP that consider the complex affective and cognitive processes and social factors that influence empathetic expression and perception.

I completed my PhD studies at University of Bonn, Germany in the Conversational AI and Social Analytics (CAISA) lab with Prof. Lucie Flek and am now postdoctoral researcher at NIH/NIDA in Baltimore, MD.