Ellen Riloff
Ellen Riloff researches NLP, information extraction and subjective language. She earned her Massachusetts Amherst doctorate in 1994 and joined Utah’s faculty that autumn. Her shared 2003 paper with Janyce Wiebe developed a bootstrapping method for learning opinion-expression patterns from text. ACL elected her a Fellow in 2018. Her broader work includes events, emotional language and common-sense knowledge. Arizona announced her move that year, and she is department head and professor.
- Now at
- University of Arizona
- Works
- 185
- Citations
- 10,539
- h-index
- 46
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1987–1994
Training and a Utah faculty career
Riloff earned her Carnegie Mellon degree in 1987 and her Massachusetts Amherst master’s and doctorate in 1989 and 1994. She joined Utah’s computer-science faculty in autumn 1994. Her doctoral training developed into an NLP research career.
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2003
Learning opinion expressions
Riloff and Janyce Wiebe developed a 2003 bootstrapping method for subjective expressions. High-precision classifiers label text, and a pattern-learning algorithm uses that material to find additional opinionated sentences.
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2018–2023
Broader language research
ACL elected Riloff a Fellow in 2018. Her work includes information extraction, emotional language, common-sense knowledge, semantics and pragmatics. These research interests include meanings and intentions that can extend beyond the literal words of a sentence.
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2023
An Arizona move
In June 2023, Arizona announced Riloff’s planned faculty arrival that autumn and a department-head transition in spring 2024. She is department head and professor.
Sources and credits
Photo: www.cs.arizona.edu; Ellen Riloff profile photograph; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: cs.arizona.edu. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.