Ellen Voorhees facts for kids
Ellen Marie Voorhees (born March 13, 1958) is an American computer scientist. She is famous for her important work in how computers find and understand information. This includes document retrieval (finding documents), information retrieval (getting useful info), and natural language processing (helping computers understand human language). She works at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in a group that focuses on finding information.
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Ellen Voorhees's Journey in Science
Early Life and School
Ellen Voorhees was born in Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania. When she finished high school in 1976 at Bensalem High School, she was the top student, known as the valedictorian.
She then went to Pennsylvania State University. In 1979, she earned her bachelor's degree in computer science. After that, she continued her studies at Cornell University. She received her master's degree there and then her Ph.D. in 1985. Her Ph.D. project was about how computers can group documents together to find information better. Her professor, Gerard Salton, guided her work.
Her Career in Computer Science
Before joining NIST, Ellen Voorhees worked at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, New Jersey. There, she developed smart computer programs, called intelligent agents, to help people find information. Her work led to many new inventions and patents. She is a very dedicated researcher and has written hundreds of technical papers about her findings.
Awards and Recognition
Honored for Her Work
Ellen Voorhees has received many important awards for her contributions to computer science.
In 2018, she was chosen as an ACM Fellow. This is a special honor given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She received it for her work in evaluating how well computers find information, answer questions, and understand language.
She is also a member of other important groups, like the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). She has also been named a fellow of the Washington Academy of Sciences. She writes many articles about how to find information and how to test these methods. She also helps review papers for different science journals and conferences.
Special Awards
In 2023, the University of Glasgow gave Ellen Voorhees an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree. This award recognized all her work in checking how well computers find information, answer questions, and use language.
In 2024, Ellen Voorhees received the Gerard Salton Award. This is a very important lifetime achievement award given by ACM's Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR). It's named after her former professor, Gerard Salton.
