Hi! I am a Principal Assessment Scientist at Duolingo where I conduct assessment innovation research for The Duolingo English Test in Assessment Research. I am the team lead for the Validity, Efficacy & Outreach team.

My career has been motivated by social impact, equitable and widely-accessible education technology, and responsible AI. My research interests lie at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP), educational measurement, equity in education, learning analytics, and linguistics. I have led NLP teams that invented automated writing evaluation (AWE)  systems used in large-scale assessment, and digital writing support applications.  Check out my publications and patent pages about this work, and federally-funded writing analytics research. 

I am a co-founder of SIG EDU, an ACL Special Interest Group on Building Educational Applications. I hold  a B.A. in Linguistics and Spanish from New York University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Linguistics from the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

On a personal note, I have been a mentor in the 101: Fund, a needs-based college scholarship fund for Princeton High School students. I currently volunteer to coordinate & distribute food at a grab-n-go food pantry in Trenton, NJ. I also volunteer for the Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Service to help resettle refugees.

Feel free to reach out: jill.burstein [at] gmail.com or jill [at] duolingo.com

Connect with me!: LinkedIn