Marie-Francine Moens
Also known as Sien Moens
Marie-Francine (Sien) Moens is a computer scientist at KU Leuven whose research includes argumentation mining, the detection of arguments in text. She earned her master's degree at KU Leuven in 1992 and her PhD there in 1999, and she became a full professor there in 2011. Her 2009 paper with Mochales Palau appeared in the proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law. She held the ERC Advanced Grant CALCULUS from 2018 to 2024, served as general chair of EMNLP 2021, and co-chaired WSDM 2025 with Cha Meeyoung and Marc Najork. As of October 2026 she is professor emerita with a research and teaching appointment at KU Leuven, and she co-wrote the 2025 book Spatial Language Understanding.
Timeline
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1992–1999
Degrees from KU Leuven
She earns a master's degree in computer science at KU Leuven in 1992 and completes her PhD there in 1999.
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2002–2012
Rising to full professor
She becomes an associate professor in the computer science department in 2007 and a full professor in 2011. In 2011 and 2012 she serves as chair of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL).
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2009
An argumentation mining paper
In 2009 she co-writes a paper with Mochales Palau on argumentation mining, which covers the detection, classification and structure of arguments in text. It appears in the proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law.
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2018–2024
An ERC Advanced Grant
She holds the ERC Advanced Grant CALCULUS for 2018 to 2024, a project the European Research Council funds.
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2021
General chair of EMNLP 2021
In 2021 she serves as general chair of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2021).
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2025
Co-chair of WSDM 2025
She serves as program co-chair of WSDM 2025 with Cha Meeyoung and Marc Najork.
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2025
A book on spatial language
She co-writes Spatial Language Understanding with Kordjamshidi and Pustejovsky, a book published in 2025.
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As of October 2026
Professor emerita at KU Leuven
She is professor emerita with a research and teaching appointment at KU Leuven.
Sources and credits
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