About

I am a third-year Ph.D. student at MIT in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, where I am advised by Roger Levy in the Computational Psycholinguistics Laboratory. I earned my B.A. from Harvard University in Mathematics and Linguistics in 2018. My research develops computational models of how humans resolve ambiguity in language understanding, with the dual goals of understanding the human mind and building better systems of artificial intelligence. I am supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the NIH Computationally-Enabled Integrative Neuroscience Training Program.

In my free time, I like making music, writing comedy, and playing SET.

Research

Manuscripts

1. Noga Zaslavsky, Jennifer Hu, and Roger Levy. 2020. A Rate–Distortion view of human pragmatic reasoning.

   @manuscript{Zaslavsky:et-al:2020,
     author = {Zaslavsky, Noga and Hu, Jennifer and Levy, Roger},
     title = {A Rate--Distortion view of human pragmatic reasoning},
     year = {2020},
     arxiv = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06641}
   }
   

Conference proceedings

1. Ethan Wilcox, Jon Gauthier, Jennifer Hu, Peng Qian, and Roger Levy. 2020. On the predictive power of neural language models for human real-time comprehension behavior. In Proceedings of the 42nd Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2020).

   @inproceedings{Wilcox:et-al:2020:syntaxgym,
     author = {Wilcox, Ethan and Gauthier, Jon and Hu, Jennifer and Qian, Peng and Levy, Roger},
     title = {On the predictive power of neural language models for human real-time comprehension behavior},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 42nd Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2020)},
     year = {2020},
     arxiv = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.01912},
     code = {https://github.com/wilcoxeg/neural-networks-read-times}
   }
   

2. Jennifer Hu, Jon Gauthier, Peng Qian, Ethan Wilcox, and Roger Levy. 2020. A Systematic Assessment of Syntactic Generalization in Neural Language Models. In Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 1725–1744, OnlineJuly. Association for Computational Linguistics.

   @inproceedings{hu-etal-2020-systematic,
     title = {A Systematic Assessment of Syntactic Generalization in Neural Language Models},
     author = {Hu, Jennifer and Gauthier, Jon and Qian, Peng and Wilcox, Ethan and Levy, Roger},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics},
     month = jul,
     year = {2020},
     address = {Online},
     publisher = {Association for Computational Linguistics},
     url = {https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.acl-main.158},
     pages = {1725--1744},
     code = {https://github.com/cpllab/syntactic-generalization}
   }
   

3. Jon Gauthier, Jennifer Hu, Ethan Wilcox, Peng Qian, and Roger Levy. 2020. SyntaxGym: An Online Platform for Targeted Evaluation of Language Models. In Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: System Demonstrations, pages 70–76, OnlineJuly. Association for Computational Linguistics.

   @inproceedings{gauthier-etal-2020-syntaxgym,
     title = {{S}yntax{G}ym: An Online Platform for Targeted Evaluation of Language Models},
     author = {Gauthier, Jon and Hu, Jennifer and Wilcox, Ethan and Qian, Peng and Levy, Roger},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: System Demonstrations},
     month = jul,
     year = {2020},
     address = {Online},
     publisher = {Association for Computational Linguistics},
     url = {https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.acl-demos.10},
     pages = {70--76}
   }
   

4. Jennifer Hu, Sherry Yong Chen, and Roger Levy. 2020. A closer look at the performance of neural language models on reflexive anaphor licensing. In Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics (SCiL 2020), volume 3, pages 382–392.

   @inproceedings{Hu:et-al:2020:reflexives,
     author = {Hu, Jennifer and Chen, Sherry Yong and Levy, Roger},
     title = {A closer look at the performance of neural language models on reflexive anaphor licensing},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics (SCiL 2020)},
     volume = {3},
     pages = {382-392},
     year = {2020},
     url = {https://scholarworks.umass.edu/scil/vol3/iss1/37/},
     code = {https://github.com/jennhu/reflexive-anaphor-licensing}
   }
   

5. Jennifer Hu, James Traer, and Josh H. McDermott. 2019. Separating object resonance and room reverberation in impact sounds. In Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2019).

   @inproceedings{Hu:et-al:2019a,
     author = {Hu, Jennifer and Traer, James and McDermott, Josh H.},
     title = {Separating object resonance and room reverberation in impact sounds},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2019)},
     year = {2019}
   }
   

6. Will Monroe, Jennifer Hu, Andrew Jong, and Christopher Potts. 2018. Generating bilingual pragmatic color references. In Proceedings of the 2018 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (NAACL-HLT 2018), pages 2155–2165.

   @inproceedings{Monroe:et-al:2018,
     author = {Monroe, Will and Hu, Jennifer and Jong, Andrew and Potts, Christopher},
     title = {Generating bilingual pragmatic color references},
     year = {2018},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2018 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (NAACL-HLT 2018)},
     data = {https://cocolab.stanford.edu/datasets/colors.html},
     pages = {2155–2165},
     doi = {10.18653/v1/N18-1196},
     code = {https://github.com/futurulus/colors-in-context}
   }
   

Peer-reviewed abstracts

1. Noga Zaslavsky, Jennifer Hu, and Roger Levy. 2021. A Rate–Distortion view of human pragmatic reasoning. In Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics (SCiL 2021).

   @abstract{Zaslavsky:et-al:2021,
     author = {Zaslavsky, Noga and Hu, Jennifer and Levy, Roger},
     title = {A Rate--Distortion view of human pragmatic reasoning},
     year = {2021},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics (SCiL 2021)}
   }
   

2. Jennifer Hu, Hannah Small, Hope Kean, Atsushi Takahashi, Leo Zekelman, Daniel Kleinman, Elizabeth Ryan, Victor Ferreira, and Evelina Fedorenko. 2020. Distributed and overlapping neural mechanisms for lexical access and syntactic encoding during language production. In Proceedings of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language (SNL 2020).

   @abstract{Hu:et-al:2020:SNL,
     author = {Hu, Jennifer and Small, Hannah and Kean, Hope and Takahashi, Atsushi and Zekelman, Leo and Kleinman, Daniel and Ryan, Elizabeth and Ferreira, Victor and Fedorenko, Evelina},
     title = {Distributed and overlapping neural mechanisms for lexical access and syntactic encoding during language production},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language (SNL 2020)},
     year = {2020}
   }
   

3. Ethan Wilcox, Jon Gauthier, Jennifer Hu, Peng Qian, and Roger Levy. 2020. Benchmarking neural networks as models of human language processing. In Proceedings of the 26th Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing Conference (AMLaP 2020).

   @abstract{Wilcox-et-al:2020:abstract,
     author = {Wilcox, Ethan and Gauthier, Jon and Hu, Jennifer and Qian, Peng and Levy, Roger},
     title = {Benchmarking neural networks as models of human language processing},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 26th Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing Conference (AMLaP 2020)},
     year = {2020}
   }
   

4. Ethan Wilcox, Jon Gauthier, Peng Qian, Jennifer Hu, and Roger Levy. 2020. Evaluating the effect of model inductive bias and training data in predicting human reading times. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference (CUNY 2020).

   @abstract{Wilcox-et-al:2020:cuny,
     author = {Wilcox, Ethan and Gauthier, Jon and Qian, Peng and Hu, Jennifer and Levy, Roger},
     title = {Evaluating the effect of model inductive bias and training data in predicting human reading times},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 33rd Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference (CUNY 2020)},
     year = {2020}
   }
   

5. Noga Zaslavsky, Jennifer Hu, and Roger Levy. 2020. Emergence of pragmatic reasoning from least-effort optimization. In Proceedings of Evolution of Language International Conferences (EvoLang XIII).

   @abstract{Zaslavsky:et-al:2020:evolang,
     author = {Zaslavsky, Noga and Hu, Jennifer and Levy, Roger},
     title = {Emergence of pragmatic reasoning from least-effort optimization},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of Evolution of Language International Conferences (EvoLang XIII)},
     year = {2020}
   }
   

6. Jennifer Hu. 2018. A graph-theoretic approach to comparing typologies in Parallel OT and Harmonic Serialism. In Proceedings of the 92nd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2018).

   @abstract{LSA2018,
     author = {Hu, Jennifer},
     title = {A graph-theoretic approach to comparing typologies in {P}arallel {OT} and {H}armonic {S}erialism},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 92nd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2018)},
     year = {2018},
     address = {Salt Lake City, UT}
   }
   

Posters

1. Ethan Wilcox, Jennifer Hu, Jon Gauthier, and Roger Levy. 2020. Evaluating the effect of model inductive bias and training data in predicting human reading times. Presented at MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab Poster Session.

   @poster{IBM2020,
     author = {Wilcox, Ethan and Hu, Jennifer and Gauthier, Jon and Levy, Roger},
     title = {Evaluating the effect of model inductive bias and training data in predicting human reading times},
     booktitle = {MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab Poster Session},
     year = {2020},
     address = {Virtual}
   }
   

2. Ethan Wilcox, Jennifer Hu, Jon Gauthier, and Roger Levy. 2019. SyntaxGym: A unified platform for psycholinguistic assessment of neural language models. Presented at MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab Research Week Colloquium.

   @poster{IBM2019,
     author = {Wilcox, Ethan and Hu, Jennifer and Gauthier, Jon and Levy, Roger},
     title = {{SyntaxGym}: A unified platform for psycholinguistic assessment of neural language models},
     booktitle = {MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab Research Week Colloquium},
     year = {2019},
     address = {Cambridge, MA}
   }
   

3. Jennifer Hu, Andrew Jong, Will Monroe, and Christopher Potts. 2017. Comparing patterns of pragmatic reasoning in Chinese and English color reference games. Presented at Council on Undergraduate Research 2017 Research Experiences for Undergraduates Symposium (CUR REUS 2017).

   @poster{CUR2017,
     author = {Hu, Jennifer and Jong, Andrew and Monroe, Will and Potts, Christopher},
     title = {Comparing patterns of pragmatic reasoning in {C}hinese and {E}nglish color reference games},
     booktitle = {Council on Undergraduate Research 2017 Research Experiences for Undergraduates Symposium (CUR REUS 2017)},
     year = {2017},
     address = {Alexandria, VA}
   }
   

Teaching

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• 9.S52: Language in the Mind and Brain (Spring 2021)
• 9.19/9.190: Computational Psycholinguistics (Spring 2020)

Harvard University

• MATH 23b: Linear Algebra and Real Analysis II (Spring 2016)
• LING 98a: Topics in Computational Linguistics (Fall 2016)
• MATH 23a: Linear Algebra and Real Analysis I (Fall 2015)
• MATH S-323: Vectors: A Tool for Teaching Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry (Summer 2015)

Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth

• PDOX: Paradoxes and Infinities (Summer 2018)

Miscellaneous

My favorite authors are Franz Kafka and Bertolt Brecht.

My best solo SET time is 1:20.