Bio
Dr. Karine Megerdoomian is Founder and Research Director of the Zoorna Institute for Language, AI & Society. Her research spans theoretical and computational linguistics, multilingual and low-resource natural language processing, narrative and event analysis, cultural-pragmatic alignment in large language models, and AI evaluation.
She spent 18 years at the MITRE Corporation, most recently as Principal Artificial Intelligence Engineer, leading interdisciplinary research and applied AI programs for federal sponsors across justice, healthcare, defense, and civilian agencies. Earlier, she served as lead linguist on the Shiraz Project at New Mexico State University’s Computing Research Laboratory, developing the first Persian-to-English machine translation system (1997-1999).
Her publications include work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Syntax, and the proceedings of EMNLP, COLING, and LREC, alongside contributions to reference works on Persian linguistics and language education.
Karine's collaborative research on cultural understanding in AI has received coverage in Ars Technica, the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA), and Tasnim News Agency. Zoorna Institute’s work on multilingual AI and underrepresented languages has also been featured in ValiantCEO.
She co-founded SilkRoadNLP, a workshop on NLP for the Iranian language family (EACL 2026, EACL 2027). She has reviewed research and funding proposals for NSF and NSERC and served as a reviewer for linguistics journals and computational linguistics conferences. Her work has received MITRE recognition for technical leadership in NLP, leadership in research and development, and thought leadership.
She has taught at Georgetown University, UC San Diego, and the American University of Armenia. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics and a B.S. in Physics from the University of Southern California.
Education & Credentials
PhD in Linguistics, University of Southern California (2002)
Dissertation advisor: Jean-Roger Vergnaud
Chief Technology Officer Certification, Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania (April 2026)
Chief AI Officer Certification, World AI X University (2025)
Graduate Certificate in Computational Social Science, George Mason University (2017)
Masters in Linguistics, USC (1995)
Secondary specialization in Neural Computation
Bachelor of Science in Physics, USC (1991)
Secondary specialization in French
What I Do
Research & Scholarship
My scholarship spans linguistic theory, computational linguistics, multilingual and low-resource NLP, cultural and pragmatic AI, narrative analysis, language pedagogy, and AI evaluation.
A recurring thread is the relationship between language structure, meaning, culture, and computation: from my early work on Persian complex predicates and computational grammar to current research on culturally responsive AI and the limitations of large language models across languages and communities.
Research Leadership & Applied AI
Across my career, I have led interdisciplinary research that moves between theory, experimentation, and real-world application.
At MITRE, I directed and contributed to multilingual NLP, narrative and social analysis, AI evaluation, and public-sector AI programs, including long-term work with the U.S. federal judiciary. That experience reinforced my interest in research that begins with difficult human problems rather than technology for its own sake.
Research, Access & Advocacy
Through the Zoorna Institute for Language, AI and Society, I develop research, educational programs, tools, and communities around languages and populations historically underserved by mainstream technology.
My work emphasizes not only technical capability, but also representation, cultural understanding, access, and whose languages and knowledge become visible in AI systems.
Teaching & AI Literacy
I have taught linguistics, computational linguistics, social-media analytics, political discourse, and heritage-language education at Georgetown University, UC San Diego, and the American University of Armenia.
I also design AI-literacy programs for nontechnical audiences, with a focus on making complex technologies understandable without either hype or unnecessary technical mystification.
I founded AI4Her to expand access to AI literacy and generative AI education for women.
Intellectual Community
I contribute to the research community as a workshop organizer, reviewer, mentor, grant evaluator, speaker, and convener.
Over the years, I have helped create and sustain communities around computational linguistics, Iranian and Arabic-script languages, multilingual NLP, and culturally responsive and low-resource AI. I founded the Society for Iranian Linguistics, organized workshops on complex predicates and Arabic-script language technologies, and more recently co-created SilkRoadNLP as a dedicated research venue for Iranic languages.
Beyond Academia
I am the founder of Artemis House Sanctuary, a nonprofit sanctuary for rescued and vulnerable cats.
The work grows from many of the same values that shape my research: attention to what is overlooked, skepticism toward systems that treat lives as interchangeable, and a belief in care, community, and creating alternatives when existing structures are inadequate.