PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Maite Taboada

Maite Taboada is a linguist at Simon Fraser University whose research joins discourse analysis with computational linguistics, from sentiment analysis to tools that measure gender bias in the news. She joined the Department of Linguistics there in 2001 and coauthored "Lexicon-Based Methods for Sentiment Analysis" in 2011, a paper that proposed the SO-CAL method and won the ACL Test-of-Time Paper Award in 2021. Her Discourse Processing Lab built the Gender Gap Tracker, described in a 2021 PLOS ONE paper, and she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2022. In September 2026, she was inducted into the Royal Galician Academy of Science in Spain as a Corresponding Member. She is a Distinguished SFU Professor and directs the Discourse Processing Lab.

Born
1970
Badges

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

  1. 2001

    Joining SFU Linguistics

    In 2001, she joins the Department of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University. Her training includes a PhD in linguistics from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and an MSc in computational linguistics from Carnegie Mellon University.

  2. 2011

    The SO-CAL sentiment paper

    In 2011, she coauthors "Lexicon-Based Methods for Sentiment Analysis" in Computational Linguistics with Julian Brooke, Milan Tofiloski, Kimberly Voll and Manfred Stede. The paper proposes the Semantic Orientation CALculator (SO-CAL) and argues for its superiority over alternative methods for sentiment analysis.

  3. 2018–2020

    Acting Associate Dean for research

    From September to December 2018, and again until August 2020, she serves as Acting Associate Dean, Research & International in SFU's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

  4. 2021

    The Gender Gap Tracker

    In 2021, she coauthors the PLOS ONE paper "The Gender Gap Tracker: Using Natural Language Processing to measure gender bias in media". The tracker comes from her Discourse Processing Lab, Informed Opinions and SFU's Big Data Hub, and it analyzes seven English-language Canadian news outlets. Data collected between October 2018 and September 2020 shows men quoted about three times as frequently as women.

  5. 2021

    An ACL Test-of-Time award

    The Association for Computational Linguistics gives the 2011 sentiment paper its 2021 Test-of-Time Paper Award, with Taboada, Brooke, Tofiloski, Voll and Stede as winners. The award recognizes papers that have exerted significant influence on computational linguistics and natural language processing.

  6. 2022

    Royal Society of Canada Fellow

    In 2022, she is named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, one of eight Simon Fraser University scholars to join the society.

  7. September 2026

    Royal Galician Academy induction

    In September 2026, she is inducted into the Royal Galician Academy of Science in Spain as a Corresponding Member. The honour recognizes her long-standing collaborations at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, with colleagues in Philology and through the Centre for Intelligent Technologies.

  8. As of October 2026

    Distinguished SFU Professor

    She is Distinguished SFU Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University and directs the Discourse Processing Lab. Among her recent projects is a collaboration on how readers react to AI translations of literary text.

Career

  1. Since 2001Simon Fraser UniversityDistinguished SFU Professor, Acting Associate Dean, Research & International

Education

  1. Complutense University of MadridPhD
  2. Carnegie Mellon UniversityMSc

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Simon Fraser 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.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Simon Fraser 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.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Simon Fraser 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.
  4. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Simon Fraser University. 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.

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 Maite Taboada yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Dr. Maite Taboada - Department of Linguistics - Simon Fraser University sfu.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Maite Taboada Named to Royal Society of Canada - Department of Linguistics - Simon Fraser University sfu.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Lexicon-Based Methods for Sentiment Analysis - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Professor Maite Taboada and team win Test of Time Award - Department of Linguistics - Simon Fraser University sfu.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Maite Taboada wraps up Acting Associate Dean term - Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences - Simon Fraser University sfu.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. The Gender Gap Tracker: Using Natural Language Processing to measure gender bias in media - PMC pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. ACL Test-of-Time Papers Award Recipients - Admin Wiki aclweb.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. News | Maite Taboada sfu.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Maite Taboada sfu.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.