Katherine Atwell

Education

• BS in Mathematics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County 
• BS in Computer Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County 

Biography

Katherine Atwell is a doctoral student in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, based in Boston. She is advised by Malihe Alikhani.

Atwell started her doctorate in natural language processing (NLP) at the University of Pittsburgh in 2020, then followed her lab and advisor to Northeastern in 2023. Since joining, she has enjoyed Khoury College’s atmosphere and opportunities for interdisciplinary research. She is especially interested in solving NLP ethics problems, including analyzing bias in language models and tackling the problem of automatic social media moderation. Atwell is fascinated by the topics’ interdisciplinary nature, the way they incorporate formal linguistics theories, and their potential for social good. 

Before joining Khoury College, Atwell worked on HCI and user experience projects as part of the Research Experience for Undergraduates program at Iowa State University. She also interned in software engineering at Google for two summers, placed third in the Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge, and won a Best Paper Award at UAI 2022.  

Outside of work, Atwell enjoys bouldering, singing, biking, being outdoors, playing the piano, and video games. 

Recent publications