PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Alyssa Mensch

Alyssa Mensch is an AI researcher whose work spans image description, visual text and security analysis. She taught crochet through MIT’s Educational Studies Program in 2008 and 2009, then coauthored papers on image description and visual text in 2012. Her 2016 papers examine named-entity extraction and recognition in microposts. Midge received the ACL Test-of-Time Paper Award in 2022, the year she was an associate technical staff member in MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Artificial Intelligence Technology and Systems Group. In May 2026, she published a benchmark of 163 real-world security triage decisions across phishing, account takeover and network use cases.

Timeline

  1. 2008–2009

    Teaching crochet at MIT ESP

    She teaches basic crochet and crochet lace through MIT’s Educational Studies Program in 2008 and 2009.

  2. 2012

    Generating image descriptions

    In 2012, she coauthors Midge: Generating Image Descriptions From Computer Vision Detections for EACL.

  3. 2012

    Detecting visual text

    In 2012, she coauthors Detecting Visual Text for the NAACL proceedings.

  4. 2016

    Entity extraction in microposts

    At the 2016 Microposts workshop, she coauthors A Reverse Approach to Named Entity Extraction and Linking in Microposts.

  5. 2016

    Named entity recognition

    At the 2016 Microposts workshop, she coauthors Named Entity Recognition in 140 Characters or Less.

  6. 2022

    An ACL Test-of-Time award

    In 2022, her 2012 Midge paper receives the ACL Test-of-Time Paper Award.

  7. 2022

    Associate technical staff

    In 2022, she is an associate technical staff member in MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Artificial Intelligence Technology and Systems Group.

  8. May 2026

    A security triage benchmark

    In May 2026, she benchmarks leading LLMs on 163 real-world security triage decisions across phishing, account takeover and network use cases.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Massachusetts 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.
  3. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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  1. MIT ESP - Alyssa Mensch esp.mit.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Midge: Generating Image Descriptions From Computer Vision Detections - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Detecting Visual Text - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. CEUR-WS.org/Vol-1691 - Making Sense of Microposts (#Microposts2016): Big things come in small packages ceur-ws.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Announcement of the 2022 ACL Test-of-Time Paper Award | ACL Member Portal aclweb.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Hal Daumé III Part of Team Receiving ACL Test of Time Award | UMD Department of Computer Science cs.umd.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Benchmarking Large Language Models for Automated Security Triage legionsecurity.ai. Checked 21 October 2026.