Leah Nicolich-Henkin

Leah is a Machine Learning Scientist at Amazon Alexa here in Pittsburgh. Her team is focused on enabling Alexa to work without an internet connection, which involves working with machine learning algorithms, model building tools, and data pipelines. She became involved in this field by way of linguistics, and an interest in the intersection of linguistics and technology. She got her BA in linguistics from Dartmouth College, followed by a couple of years working at a small company in Portland, OR that specializes in speech recognition and “wake words”. She moved to Pittsburgh to get a Masters in Language Technology at Carnegie Mellon University, where she focused on dialog systems. She has been working on Alexa for the last three years. Outside of work she is an active bicycle and safe streets advocate.