Best Dressed NLP Researchers (2014)

Editor's (my) Notes


I disclosed to several people at ACL 2014 that I have a secret list of best dressed people in the field, and got surprised that how many of them are really interested in it. Now it is official! This list is to recognize the efforts of who are being the eye-candies for us throughout the years. So there will be no worst dressed list. I defend everyone's right to wear whatever they want.

The criteria is threefold: good taste, appropriateness for occasions, consistency. This probably explains why there are more senior peoples on the list. And apparently it is also biased by visibility (since I am not paying that much attention to what everyone is wearing).

Last updated: Oct 21, 2014

Top 10 (alphabetical order)


  • Jacob Eisenstein he looks like he lives in Brooklyn, NY.
  • Dan Jurafsky nice colored T-shirt and pants.
  • Kevin Knight very very reliably great-looking silver hair (for ~30 years). Plus the vintage glass frame. Wonder if he has ever had a bad-hair day.
  • Mitch Marcus very reliably great choices of shirts. Not too casual not too dressy. His tuxedo look is superb.
  • Kathy McKeown bold but classic. Kathy has got the best set of dresses. Her former student, Pascale Fung, is also good at pulling out bold-colored dresses.
  • Ellie Pavlick unique focus on scarf and earring combo.
  • 4 empty slots to fill (accepting nominations at xwe@cis.upenn.edu)


  • Watch List


  • Chris Callison-Burch uses a 3D messenger bag and a felt bag.
  • Jonathan Berant a stable taste with variety
  • Claire Cardie for her sleek look in the pants at the Workshop on Big Data and Human Language Technology 2013
  • Dirk Hovy not afraid of expressing personal style
  • Alan Ritter consistency
  • Amittai Axelrod his suit jacket and outdoor style
  • Greg Durrett consistency
  • Adam Lopez nominated
  • William Yang Wang nominated
  • Dekai Wu nominated
  • Pascale Fung nominated
  • Rebecca Hwa nominated