Rachel Ostrand

Rachel Ostrand is a Staff Research Scientist at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, NY. Her research focuses on language production in dialogue, and in particular, how people adapt characteristics of their language use based on the current context. A particular focus is partner-specific linguistic alignment, looking at the situations in which people modify properties of their speech to match those of their individual conversational partner, as opposed to speaking with the same linguistic properties across multiple people. She is also interested in linguistic interaction between humans and computers (chatbots, large language models, conversational assistants) and when and how people adapt their language production and expectations differently when talking with a machine as compared to another human. She also does research on using spontaneous speech as a remote, low-cost, low-burden diagnostic marker for detection of early-stage dementia and cognitive decline, including developing automated assessment metrics for detecting small cognitive changes through language production.