PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Alon Lavie

Alon Lavie is a machine-translation researcher whose work includes METEOR and COMET, metrics for evaluating translated text. He completed a Carnegie Mellon dissertation on robust spoken-language parsing in 1996 and directed METEOR's development from 2004 to 2014. He held leadership roles at AMTA, IAMT and Safaba, led Amazon's Machine Translation R&D group, and directed COMET's development at Unbabel. He received the 2021 Makoto Nagao Award of Honor from IAMT, and Phrase appointed him vice president of AI Research in 2023. Since July 2025, he is a Distinguished Career Professor at Carnegie Mellon's Language Technologies Institute.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 1996

    GLR* for spoken language

    In May 1996, he completes GLR*, his Carnegie Mellon dissertation on robust parsing of spontaneously spoken language. Advisors M. Tomita, J. Carbonell, A. Waibel and E. Gibson guide the dissertation.

  2. 2004–2014

    METEOR for translation evaluation

    From 2004 to 2014, he directs development of METEOR, an automatic metric for machine-translation evaluation. In a 2005 paper, he and Satanjeev Banerjee describe METEOR's improved correlation with human judgments.

  3. 2008–2015

    Leading AMTA, IAMT and Safaba

    From 2008 to 2012, he serves as president of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas; he serves as president of the International Association for Machine Translation from 2013 to 2015. In 2009, he co-founds Safaba Translation Solutions and serves as its president and chairman until Amazon acquires it in 2015.

  4. 2015–2019

    Amazon machine-translation research

    From June 2015 to March 2019, he leads Amazon's Machine Translation R&D group in Pittsburgh as a senior manager.

  5. 2020

    COMET at Unbabel

    While vice president of language technologies at Unbabel, he directs development of COMET, a neural metric for machine-translation evaluation. A 2020 paper he coauthors presents it as a multilingual framework for evaluating machine translation.

  6. 2021

    An IAMT translation award

    In August 2021, he receives the Makoto Nagao Award of Honor from IAMT at the 18th Machine Translation Summit.

  7. July 2023–July 2025

    VP of AI Research at Phrase

    Phrase appoints him vice president of AI Research in July 2023. He returns to CMU's faculty in an active role in July 2025.

  8. Since July 2025

    Professor at CMU's LTI

    He is a Distinguished Career Professor at Carnegie Mellon's Language Technologies Institute.

Career

  1. Since 2025Carnegie Mellon UniversityDistinguished Career Professor
  2. 2023–2025PhraseVice President of AI Research
  3. 2015–2019AmazonSenior Manager
  4. 2013–2015International Association for Machine TranslationPresident
  5. 2009–2015Safaba Translation SolutionsCo-founder, President and Chairman
  6. UnbabelVice President of Language Technologies

Education

  1. 1996Carnegie Mellon University

From the biography.

  1. 23% of people shaping AI who left a university for a company later returned to a universityIncludes Alon Lavie. We estimate that 468 of the 2,011 people shaping AI who left a university for a company (23%) later returned to a university after a median of 5 years, and 163 of 829 (20%) made the reverse round trip.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Carnegie Mellon University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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

  1. Publications - Dissertations - GLR*: A Robust Grammar-Focused Parser For Spontaneously Spoken Language isl.iar.kit.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Alon's Home Page cs.cmu.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. METEOR: An Automatic Metric for MT Evaluation with Improved Correlation with Human Judgments - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Dr. Alon Lavie, VP of AI Research at Phrase phrase.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Dr. Alon Lavie Appointed as New VP of AI Research | Phrase phrase.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. COMET: A Neural Framework for MT Evaluation - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Unbabel Launches COMET, Blazing New Trail for Ultra-Accurate Machine Translation - Unbabel unbabel.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. Alon Lavie Honored by International Association for Machine Translation cs.cmu.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  9. Alon Lavie - Language Technologies Institute - School of Computer Science - Carnegie Mellon University lti.cmu.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.