Expertise
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Assistant Professor
Computing and Software
Overview
Dr. Lahnala leads interdisciplinary research at the intersection of natural language processing, computational social science, and psychology. Her research interests include modelling social, goal-oriented conversation, with particular emphasis on empathy, argumentation, and conversational dynamics. A central methodological focus is on developing efficient methods for integrating behavioural and psychological insights into personalized machine learning systems and socially grounded language technology.
Did you know?
Dr. Lahnala joined the Department of Computing and Software as an Assistant Professor in July 2025. Prior to joining McMaster, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, where she studied digital phenotyping and substance use at the National Institute on Drug Abuse branch. She holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Bonn.
2024: PhD in Computer Science, University of Bonn, Germany,
2020: Master of Science in Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, USA,
2017: Bachelor of Science in Computer science, University of Michigan, USA