Prof. Ido Dagan
Natural language processing, machine learning and statistical methods, information retrieval and text analysis
CV
Prof. Dagan is the founder of the NLP Lab at Bar-Ilan University and a Fellow of the ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics), the world's leading organization in the field. He served as the President of the ACL in 2010 and led the establishment of its flagship journal, Transactions of the ACL. He earned his PhD from the Technion (1992), worked as a researcher at IBM, Google, and AT&T Bell Labs, and was the co-founder and CTO of the startup FocusEngine. He is also a recipient of the prestigious Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research.
Research
A physician searching for medical data for a patient is often overwhelmed by hundreds of medical papers, which sometimes present varying or even contradictory conclusions. A computer can read them all in seconds, but it does not necessarily understand which study supports another, which one disputes it, and what all this information actually implies. Prof. Ido Dagan develops tools that enable computers not only to read text, but to comprehend the connections between different texts and infer their implications. One of his foundational contributions is the pioneering of Textual Entailment (aka NLI - Natural Language Inference): the ability to determine whether the meaning of one text can be inferred from another. For example, deducing from the statement "The company announced employee layoffs" that "The company is reducing its workforce." This concept has become a cornerstone in the development of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the broader field of Natural Language Processing (NLP).
His research focuses on empowering computers to map, consolidate, and reason over language meaning, bridging the gap between raw text processing and genuine computational understanding.
Primary Research Areas:
Textual Entailment & Inference: Developing frameworks for computing logical and semantic relations between texts.
Applied Semantic Processing: Extracting and structuring meaning from natural language.
Human-AI Collaboration Systems: Designing interactive AI interfaces that complement and support human workflows.
AI and Language Processing in Education: Applying NLP technologies to enhance learning and educational tools.
Research Nature:
Theoretical-Applied: Developing core frameworks for computational language understanding alongside practical, real-world systems and applications.
Career Path:
Graduates and alumni of the lab acquire top-tier expertise and transition into key roles across multiple sectors:
Industry: NLP Researchers and Data Scientists at global tech giants. Lab alumni currently hold leading positions in research labs at Google, IBM, and numerous innovative companies.
Academia: Researchers and faculty members at leading universities in Israel and worldwide.
Entrepreneurship: Founders of technology startups at the forefront of natural language processing and artificial intelligence.
Last Updated Date : 26/07/2026
