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Picture of Lara with purple asymmetric hair, dangly earrings, and a blue/maroon striped dress

Lara J. Martin, PhD

Assistant Professor at the
University of Maryland, Baltimore County


Human-Centered AI, Applied NLP, Neurosymbolic Methods, Automated Story Generation, AAC, Dungeons and Dragons AI

Researcher

How to say Lara
I make systems that improve how people talk with computers and to each other through computers. Most of my career so far has been teaching computers how to tell stories (also known as automated story generation) and working my way towards an AI Dungeon Master. I am also currently working on Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) and speech technologies.
I run the LARA Lab and am a member of the Interactive Robotics and Language Lab (IRAL). My pronouns are she/they.

Contact

Email
In Person
Information Technology and Engineering (ITE) Building, Room 216
1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250

Biography

Biography

About Me

My research interests include:
human-AI communication/collaboration
  • computational creativity
  • interactive narrative
  • narrative generation & understanding
  • dialog systems & conversational agents
  • cognitive systems
and computer-mediated human-human communication
I work from a blend of research and methods from various fields:
  • natural language processing/language technologies,
  • linguistics,
  • human-computer interaction,
  • cognitive science,
  • and artifical intelligence.

Some of my non-research passions include AI equity, science communication, and educating children about computer science and technology.

Check out my CV for more information.

Third-Person Bio

Dr. Lara J. Martin (she/they) is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in the CSEE department, researching human-centered artificial intelligence with a focus on natural language processing applications. They have worked in the areas of automated story generation, augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) tools, AI for tabletop roleplaying games, speech processing, and affective computing—publishing in top-tier conferences such as AAAI, ACL, EMNLP, and IJCAI. They have also been featured in Wired and BBC Science Focus magazine.
Previously, Dr. Martin was a 2020 Computing Innovation Fellow (CIFellow) postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania working with Dr. Chris Callison-Burch. She earned her PhD in Human-Centered Computing from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she worked with Dr. Mark Riedl. She also has a MS in Language Technologies from Carnegie Mellon University and a BS in Computer Science & Linguistics from Rutgers University—New Brunswick.

Teaching

Teaching

I have a teaching certificate from Georgia Tech, Summer 2018.

CMSC 491/691 Interactive Fiction and Text Generation
Fall 2024
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
CMSC 473/673 Natural Language Processing
Spring 2024
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
CMSC 671 Principles of Artificial Intelligence
Fall 2023
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
CIS 700 Interactive Fiction and Text Generation
Spring 2022
University of Pennsylvania
Co-taught with Dr. Chris Callison-Burch
CS 3790 Introduction to Cognitive Science
Summer 2018
Georgia Institute of Technology

Media

Media


Hallucinating ChatGPT finds a role playing Dungeons & Dragons by Thomas Claburn for The Register.
Aug 19, 2023.

Lara Martin: "How Can I get a system to tell a story about anything I want?" by Masoud Golsorkhi for TANK Magazine, Issue 88 (Narrative).
Autumn 2021.

Lara Martin on teaching AI to tell stories by Amy Barrett for Science Focus Podcast.
Mar 15, 2021.

Alexa, tell me a story by Amy Barrett for Science Focus Magazine.
Feb 17, 2021.

Forget Chess—the Real Challenge Is Teaching AI to Play D&D by Will Knight for Wired.
Feb 28, 2020.

Talks

Talks

9/11/2020 - Georgia Tech's NLP Seminar Series


5/5/2022 - USC's Natural Language Seminar


2/16/2024 - Johns Hopkins University's Center for Language & Speech Processng (CLSP)


Blog

Blog

01

Jul
ChatGPT will not replace writers...unless we let it
What you should and shouldn't be concerned about when it comes to your writing job. · 4 minute read

It looks like the Writers Guild (the union for people who write movies and TV...

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21

Jun
No, LaMDA Isn't Sentient
I explain at a high level why LaMDA can't be sentient. · 5 minute read

[Expanded from a Facebook post of mine, originally posted June 14, 2022.] You might have...

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Fun Facts

Fun Facts