Marilyn Walker

Biography

Marilyn Walker is a Professor of Computer Science and head of the Natural Language and Dialogue Systems Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her current research includes work on extending the language capabilities of interactive games, with a focus on training, assistive, and educational games. Statistical and expressive natural language generation, dialogue systems, artificial intelligence, computer games, and human computer interaction are also among her research interests.

Before coming to Santa Cruz , Marilyn was a Professor of Computer Science at University of Sheffield. From 1996 to 2003, she was a Principal Member of Research Staff in the Speech and Information Processing Lab at AT&T Bell Labs and AT&T Research. While at AT&T, Marilyn worked on the AT&T Communicator project, where she developed a new architecture for spoken dialogue systems and statistical methods for dialogue management and generation.

Marilyn has published more than 200 papers, and has 10 granted/pending U.S. patents. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Pennsylvania (1993).