Roger Levy

Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

About

My research focuses on theoretical and applied questions in the processing and acquisition of natural language. Linguistic communication involves the resolution of uncertainty over a potentially unbounded set of possible signals and meanings. How can a fixed set of knowledge and resources be deployed to manage this uncertainty? And how is this knowledge acquired? To address these questions I combine computational modeling, psycholinguistic experimentation, and analysis of large naturalistic language datasets. This work furthers our understanding of the cognitive underpinning of language processing and acquisition, and helps us design models and algorithms that will allow machines to process human language.

Experience

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (10 yrs 6 mos)
    • Chair of the MIT Faculty
      Jul 2025 - Present · 1 yr

    • Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
      Jul 2021 - Present · 5 yrs

      My research focuses on theoretical and applied questions in the processing and acquisition of natural language. Linguistic communication involves the resolution of uncertainty over a potentially unbounded set of possible signals and meanings. How can a fixed set of knowledge and resources be deployed to manage this uncertainty? And how is this knowledge acquired? To address these questions I combine computational modeling, psycholinguistic experimentation, and analysis of large naturalistic language datasets. This work furthers our understanding of the cognitive underpinning of language processing and acquisition, and helps us design models and algorithms that will allow machines to process human language.

    • Associate Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
      Jan 2016 - Jun 2021 · 5 yrs 6 mos

  • President at Cognitive Science Society
    Aug 2024 - Jul 2025 · 1 yr

  • Associate Professor of Linguistics at UC San Diego
    Jul 2012 - Dec 2015 · 3 yrs 6 mos

    See my website for details

  • Assistant Professor of Linguistics at UC San Diego
    2006 - 2012 · 6 yrs

    See my website for details.

  • Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Edinburgh
    2005 - 2006 · 1 yr

    ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Informatics