Mari Ostendorf
Mari Ostendorf earned a Stanford doctorate in 1985. She joined the University of Washington in 1999 and researched speech and language. Ostendorf advised the student team that won the inaugural Alexa Prize in 2017. This shared effort built a conversational socialbot. Her work includes schema-driven dialogue-state tracking and DIALKI knowledge identification in conversations. Her broader program models speech and text in multi-party settings, including prosody and information extraction.
- Now at
- University of Washington
- Works
- 426
- Citations
- 14,774
- h-index
- 59
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1985–1999
Doctorate and Washington faculty
Mari Ostendorf earned a Stanford doctorate in 1985. She joined the University of Washington in 1999 and researched speech and language.
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2017
A social conversation system
Ostendorf advised the student team that won the inaugural Alexa Prize in 2017. This shared effort built a conversational socialbot.
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2021
Language in context
Her work includes schema-driven dialogue-state tracking and DIALKI knowledge identification in conversations. Her broader program models speech and text in multi-party settings, including prosody and information extraction.
Sources and credits
Photo: MARK STONE UPHOTO UW; Copyright: UofWASHINGTON. License: Not stated by source. Source: people.ece.uw.edu. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.