Curriculum Vitae

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Aaron Steven White

Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics

University of Rochester

aaron.white@rochester.edu
http://aaronstevenwhite.io
http://factslab.io
github.com/aaronstevenwhite

Positions

Full-time appointments

2023–present
Associate Professor, University of Rochester
Primary: Linguistics · Secondary: Computer Science
Affiliations: Goergen Institute for Data Science
2017–2023
Assistant Professor, University of Rochester
Primary: Linguistics · Secondary: Computer Science
Affiliations: Goergen Institute for Data Science
2015–2017
Postdoctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins University
Primary: Science of Learning Institute
Affiliations: Cognitive Science, Center for Language and Speech Processing

Temporary appointments

2025
Instructor, European Summer School on Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI 2025). Ruhr University Bochum.
2025
Instructor, North American Summer School on Logic, Language, and Information (NASSLLI 2025). University of Washington.
2023
Instructor, Linguistic Society of America Institute. University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
2017
Instructor, European Summer School on Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI 2017). University of Toulouse.

Education

2015
Ph.D. Linguistics, University of Maryland, College Park
Thesis: Information and incrementality in syntactic bootstrapping
Advisors: Valentine Hacquard, Jeffrey Lidz
Committee: Philip Resnik, Naomi Feldman, Hal Daume III
2009
B.A. Linguistics, University of California, Santa Cruz

Awards

Grants

2023–2028
PI. National Science Foundation NSF-BCS/IIS-2237175. $497,928
CAREER: Logical Form Induction
2021–2024
PI (Lead Organization). National Science Foundation NSF-BCS-2040831. $449,932
Computational Modeling of the Internal Structure of Events
2018–2022
PI (Lead Organization). National Science Foundation NSF-BCS-1748969. $407,930
The MegaAttitude Project: Investigating selection and polysemy at the scale of the lexicon
2022–2025
Co-PI. National Science Foundation NSF-BCS-2214933. $439,222
The typology of subordinate clauses: A study of Zulu
2015–2016
Co-PI. National Science Foundation NSF-BCS-DDRIG-1456013. $18,112
Learning attitude verb meanings

Contracts

2019–2022
Co-PI. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity . $2,868,000
Multilingual Decompositional Analysis and Retrieval
2018–2022
Co-PI. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency . $3,213,569
Multimodal Decompositional Semantics
2019–2021
Co-PI. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency . $4,045,546
Decompositional Schema Induction and Prediction

Fellowships

2015–2017
Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship. Science of Learning Institute, Johns Hopkins University.
2009–2010
Baggett Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship. Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland, College Park.

Papers

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Presentations

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Resources

Software

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Data

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Teaching

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Advising

Primary PhD Advising

exp. 2029
Woo Jin Choi
exp. 2029
Pavlo Kuchmiichuk
exp. 2026
Stephanie Richter
2024
William Gantt
2024
Siddharth Vashishtha

Secondary PhD Advising

exp. 2026
Jin Dou
exp. 2025
Hannah An
2024
Benjamin Kane

MS/MA Advising

2025
Angela Cao, MS, Computer Science
2025
Chihsheng Jin, MS, Computational Linguistics
2024
Pavlo Kuchmiichuk, MS, Computational Linguistics
2024
Akash Chaudhuri, MS, Computational Linguistics
2024
Congwen Zhang, MS, Computational Linguistics
2024
Siwei Tang, MS, Computational Linguistics
2023
Arsal Imtiaz, MS, Computer Science
2023
Chandrashekar Nair, MS, Computer Science
2023
Zixu Wang, MS, Computational Linguistics
2022
Zhendong Liu, MS, Computational Linguistics
2022
Weiwei Gu, MS, Computer Science
2020
Ellise Moon, MA, Linguistics
2019
Hannah An, MS, Computational Linguistics
2019
Siddharth Vashishtha, MS, Computational Linguistics
2019
Venkata Govindarajan, MS, Computational Linguistics

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

2024
Alexander Martin, BS, Computer Science

Thesis Committees

exp. 2025
Ruby Zeng, PhD, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester
2024
Seth Ebner, PhD, Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University
2023
Chen Yu, PhD, Computer Science, University of Rochester
2023
Zachary Burchill, PhD, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester
2022
Lane Lawley, PhD, Computer Science, University of Rochester
2022
Georgiy Platonov, PhD, Computer Science, University of Rochester
2022
Lisa Jin, PhD, Computer Science, University of Rochester
2021
Gene Kim, PhD, Computer Science, University of Rochester
2021
Parker Riley, PhD, Computer Science, University of Rochester
2021
Tianlang Chen, PhD, Computer Science, University of Rochester
2020
Nabil Hossain, PhD, Computer Science, University of Rochester
2020
Adam Poliak, PhD, Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University
2019
Rachel Rudinger, PhD, Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University
2019
Adam Teichert, PhD, Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University

Thesis Defense Chair

2020
Wednesday Bushong, PhD, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester
2019
Ryan Yates, PhD, Computer Science, University of Rochester
2019
Frank Mollica, PhD, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester
2019
Matthew Overlan, PhD, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester
2018
Xiaochang Peng, PhD, Computer Science, University of Rochester

Service

University roles

2025–present
Director, Center for Language Sciences, University of Rochester

Departmental roles

2023–2024
Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Linguistics, University of Rochester

Other departmental service

2023–2024
Hiring Committee Member, Open Rank (Computational Social Science), Goergen Institute for Data Science, University of Rochester
2021–2022
Hiring Committee Member, Associate or Full Professor (NLP/ML), Department of Computer Science, University of Rochester
2018–2020
University Faculty Council Representative, Department of Linguistics, University of Rochester
2017–2019
Cognitive Science Dinner Committee Member, Center for Language Sciences, University of Rochester
2018–2019
Hiring Committee, Open Rank (Syntax), Department of Linguistics, University of Rochester
2017–2018
Hiring Committee, Open Rank (Semantics), Department of Linguistics, University of Rochester

Other university service

2025
Presenter at CAREER Award Preparation Workshop, University of Rochester
2025
Reviewer for University Research Awards, University of Rochester
2025
Member of Research Computing Assessment Focus Group, University of Rochester
2024
Presenter at CAREER Award Preparation Workshop, University of Rochester
2023
Faculty Student Marshal for University Commencement, University of Rochester
2023
Reviewer for University Research Awards, University of Rochester
2022
Leader of Workshop on De-Mystifying the Federal Research Grant Submission Process for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rochester
2022
Member of Fulbright Campus Evaluation Committee, University of Rochester
2019
Reviewer for Sproull and Provost Fellowships, University of Rochester
2018
Member of Academic Job Search Faculty Panel, University of Rochester

Grant reviewing (panel)

  • National Science Foundation (DGE-BCS, Sep. 2025)
  • National Science Foundation (DGE-BCS, Dec. 2023)

Grant reviewing (ad hoc)

  • National Science Foundation (DGE-BCS, Oct. 2023)
  • National Science Foundation (DGE-BCS, Mar. 2023)
  • German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft)

Journal reviewing (standing)

  • Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics

Journal reviewing (ad hoc)

  • Language
  • Semantics & Pragmatics
  • Linguistics & Philosophy
  • Journal of Semantics
  • Natural Language Semantics
  • Linguistic Inquiry
  • Cognition
  • Cognitive Science
  • Language Acquisition
  • Glossa
  • Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics
  • Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience
  • Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
  • Linguistics Vanguard

Chapter reviewing

  • Cambridge Elements in Semantics, Cambridge University Press
  • Semantics in Acquisition, Trends in Language Acquisition Research, John Benjamins

Conference organizing

  • Organizer, SALT34

Workshop organizing

  • Organizer, PEER2025
  • Organizer, PEER2023

Conference senior program committee

  • Senior Area Chair (Lexical Semantics), ACL 2024
  • Senior Area Chair (Information Extraction), ACL 2023

Conference program committee

  • Area Chair (Linguistic Theories, Cognitive Modeling and Psycholinguistics), EMNLP 2022
  • Area Chair (Language Resources and Evaluation), NAACL-HLT 2021

Conference reviewing

  • Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT 2017, 2019-2023)
  • Amsterdam Colloquium (AC 2017)
  • Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 2017-2021)
  • Annual Meeting of the Society for Computation in Linguistics (SCiL 2020, 2022)
  • West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 2022)
  • Experiments in Linguistic Meaning (ELM 2022)
  • Cognitive Science Society annual conference (CogSci 2014-2019)
  • Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD 2017)
  • Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2019-2020, 2022)
  • Annual Meeting of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL 2021, 2023)
  • International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2018)
  • International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (IJCNLP 2017)
  • Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2018-2020)
  • AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2019)
  • Language, Data, and Knowledge (LDK 2019)