PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Alan Ritter

Alan Ritter is a natural language processing researcher whose work spans information extraction, conversational systems, and language models. He completed a PhD at the University of Washington in 2013, worked on Twitter text tools and an event-extraction calendar, and joined Georgia Tech's Machine Learning Center in 2020. He received an Amazon Research Award for open-domain conversational question answering in 2018, served as NAACL 2025 program co-chair, and received a 2025 Google Academic Research Award for social-media privacy tools. As of October 2026, he is an associate professor in Georgia Tech's School of Interactive Computing and studies language-model reasoning and AI agents.

Born
1980
Works
142
Citations
10,447
h-index
37
Links
Website and Google Scholar

Years link to their sources. Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2006

    A BS/MS at Western Washington

    He earns a BS/MS in computer science from Western Washington University in 2006.

  2. 2011

    Twitter NLP tools

    In 2011, he works on Twitter-specific text-processing tools after standard part-of-speech taggers and named-entity recognizers struggle with noisy social-media text.

  3. 2012

    Extracting events from Twitter

    In 2012, his event-extraction work uses named entities and temporal expressions to extract a calendar of popular future events from Twitter.

  4. 2013–2014

    A UW PhD and CMU postdoc

    He completes a PhD in computer science and engineering at the University of Washington in 2013. In 2014, he is a postdoctoral fellow in Carnegie Mellon's Machine Learning Department.

  5. 2018

    An Amazon Research Award

    In 2018, he receives an Amazon Research Award for integrating data-driven conversation into open-domain question answering.

  6. 2020

    Joining Georgia Tech

    At the start of fall 2020, he joins Georgia Tech's Machine Learning Center as a faculty member while it expands its natural language processing work.

  7. 2025

    Program co-chair at NAACL

    In 2025, he serves as program co-chair for NAACL. A Google Academic Research Award supports his social-media privacy project, which uses interactive AI agents to help people make informed choices about online sharing and reduce privacy risks in text and images.

  8. As of October 2026

    Associate professor at Georgia Tech

    He is an associate professor in Georgia Tech's School of Interactive Computing. His research focuses on natural language processing, information extraction, machine learning, and language models that reason and act as agents. In April 2026, he serves as fellowship advisor to PhD student Ethan Mendes on AI agents that function as teammates.

Career

  1. Since 2020Georgia Institute of TechnologyFaculty Member
  2. 2014Carnegie Mellon UniversityPostdoctoral Fellow
  3. 2014–2020Ohio State University

Education

  1. 2013University of WashingtonPhD
  2. 2006Western Washington UniversityBS/MS

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Georgia Institute of Technology. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Georgia Institute of Technology. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  3. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes Georgia Institute of Technology. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.
  4. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes Georgia Institute of Technology. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Alan Ritter yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. aritter34 | College of Computing cc.gatech.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Alan Ritter aritter.github.io. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Alan Ritter | School of Interactive Computing ic.gatech.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Alan Ritter - Amazon Science amazon.science. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. ML@GT Expands Natural Language Processing and Data Science Research with New Faculty Hires cc.gatech.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. NAACL 2025 – Research Impact & Leadership sites.gatech.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Researchers Look to Maker Safer AI Through Google Awards news.gatech.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. Professor, Student to Design Collaborative AI Systems Through Microsoft Fellowships gatech.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.