Wendy Lehnert

In 1982, Wendy Lehnert left Yale to join the Manning College of Information and Sciences (CICS) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she specialized in natural language processing and cognitive models of human thought processes. Previously, Lehnert had joined the faculty at Yale in 1977, where she held a joint appointment in computer science and psychology. In the 1990's, Lehnert was a pioneer in the area of information extraction from text and natural language processing performance evaluations. Most recently, she has been investigating traditional Chinese medicine as a model of memory-intensive reasoning and problem solving. As a result of her studies in this area, Lehnert is licensed to practice acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine in the state of Massachusetts.

In 1984, Lehnert received the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation in recognition of her work in artificial intelligence, and in 1991 she was elected Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. In 1993, Lehnert served as a program co-chair for the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. In 1996, she was honored as a UMass Amherst Distinguished Faculty Lecturer and received the Chancellor's Medal. Lehnert has served on scientific advisory boards for the National Science Foundation, the National Library of Medicine, as well as served as a member of the Information Science and Technology Committee for the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense. Lehnert has been elected to the membership of the Board of Counselors for the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, as well as the governing board for the Cognitive Science Society. She has also served as a senior editor for Cognitive Science, as well as published nine books and over 100 journal articles, conference papers, and book chapters.