Daniel Gorin is the founder of two EdTech companies, phase-­6 and Alphary. Both companies focus on language learning. phase6 is a spaced-repetition flash-card system which was launched in Germany in 2002. It is now used in conjunction with materials published by Langenscheidt, Klett, Cornelsen, Hueber and others.

Alphary’s mission is to combine the technological power of Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) and Natural Language Processing (‘NLP’) with the very latest research into language learning in order to help learners acquire English language skills in more efficient, more enjoyable and more personalized ways. Its ambition is to provide a state-­of-­the-­art platform that unlocks the power of the Oxford Learners’ Dictionaries to facilitate hassle­-free vocabulary acquisition. It will be recognized by learners, teachers, linguists and psychologists as the smartest app that is available.

Kory L. Stamper joined Merriam-Webster as an editor and lexicographer in 1998, and has defined and edited entries for a number of dictionaries and thesauri, including Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary, and the new Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary. In addition to defining, she writes on etymology and usage for the Merriam-Webster blog “A Thing About Words” at Merriam-WebsterUnabridged.com, and for the popular Ask the Editor video series at Merriam-Webster.com. Her articles on lexicography and word trends have appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, and on Slate.com, and blog on lexicography, harmlessdrudgery.com, has been featured in the Paris Review, The Millions, and the New York Times. Kory earned her B.A. in Medieval Studies from Smith College with a focus on Indo-European languages and literature.

Ted Briscoe has been a member of staff at the Computer Laboratory since 1989, a Reader since 2000, and Professor of Computational Linguistics since 2004. His broad research interests are computational and theoretical linguistics and automated speech and language processing. He directed and was heavily involved in the teaching of the MPhil in Computer Speech, Text and Internet Technology, taught jointly with the Engineering Department. He has developed numerous applications building on this research through iLexIR Ltd, a consultancy company he cofounded in 2004 — for example, automated assessment of and error detection in English language learners’ texts.

He has published over 100 research articles, edited three books, and been Principal/Co-Investigator or Coordinator of fifteen EU and UK funded projects since 1985. He is joint editor of Computer Speech and Language and founding director of the Alta Institute.

Roberto Navigli is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science of the Sapienza University of Rome. He is the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant in computer science and informatics on multilingual word sense disambiguation (2011-2016) and a co-PI of a Google Focused Research Award on Natural Language Understanding. His research lies in the field of Natural Language Processing (including word sense disambiguation and induction, ontology learning from scratch, large-scale knowledge acquisition, open information extraction and relation extraction).

He has served as an area chair of ACL, WWW, and *SEM, and a senior program committee member of IJCAI. Currently he is an Associate Editor of the Artificial Intelligence Journal, a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Natural Language Engineering, a guest editor of the Journal of Web Semantics, and a former editorial board member of Computational Linguistics.