SEATTLE — Yejin Choi, a University of Washington professor and computer scientist, has been named one of this year’s MacArthur fellows.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the 25 winners of its prestigious fellowship, commonly known as the “genius grant,” on Tuesday.
The fellowship, which is awarded to individuals who show “exceptional creativity in their work,” comes with an $800,000 stipend, distributed over five years.
“When I received the phone call from the Foundation, I thought they were going to ask me to do some consulting work,” said Choi in a news release. “My heart almost stopped beating when I heard ‘congratulations’ instead. This is such a great honor because there have been only two other researchers in the natural language processing field who have received this award.”
According to the UW, Choi uses natural language processing to develop artificial intelligence-based systems that can perform common sense reasoning and understand the implied meanings in human language.
Candidates for the fellowship are nominated anonymously by leaders in their field. The foundation says it receives approximately 2,000 nominations each year.
An anonymous committee of about 12 people then chooses the winners, typically awarding 20 to 30 fellowships each year.
“The MacArthur Foundation could not have picked a better candidate than Yejin Choi,” said Magdalena Balazinska, UW professor and director of the Allen School. “Yejin epitomizes what the ‘genius grant’ is all about — she is fearless about breaking down barriers, asking hard questions and pushing AI in exciting new directions.”
Choi says she has yet to determine exactly what she will do with the award, but she hopes to use it to “pursue impactful though potentially risky, research ideas.”
Thirteen other UW faculty have previously received the award, according to the university.
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