Maria Valentini

About

I'm a PhD candidate in Computer Science and Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, advised by Katharina von der Wense and Eliana Colunga, with an expected graduation date of May 2027.

My research lies at the intersection of natural language processing and computational psycholinguistics, leveraging computational and statistical models to both understand and support language learning in young children. I also have interests in human-centered AI evaluation and multilingual NLP.

Outside of research, I enjoy tennis, hockey skating, and caring for my guinea pigs.

Publications

• COLM 2026
  An Investigation of Translationese in the Generations of Multilingual Large Language Models

  M. Valentini, T. Wright, J. Granados, E. Colunga, K. von der Wense
• CogSci 2026
  Does Contextual Informativeness Predict Preschoolers' Word Learning from Stories?

  M. Valentini, J. Granados, K. von der Wense, E. Colunga
• ACL 2026
  Massively Multilingual Joint Segmentation and Glossing

  M. Ginn, L. Tjuatja, E. Rice, A. Marashian, M. Valentini, J. Xu, A. Palmer, G. Neubig

  Outstanding Paper Award
• COLING 2025
  Measuring Contextual Informativeness in Child-Directed Text

  M. Valentini, T. Wright, A. Marashian, J. Weber, E. Colunga, K. von der Wense
• CoRL 2024
  DeliGrasp: Inferring Object Properties with LLMs for Adaptive Grasp Policies

  W. Xie, M. Valentini, J. Lavering, N. Correll
• CogSci 2024
  Evaluating LLMs as Tools to Support Early Vocabulary Learning

  J. Weber, M. Valentini, T. Wright, K. von der Wense, E. Colunga
• EMNLP 2023
  On the Automatic Generation and Simplification of Children's Stories

  M. Valentini, J. Weber, J. Salcido, T. Wright, E. Colunga, K. Kann
• NLP4PI Workshop 2022
  Generate Me a Bedtime Story: Leveraging Natural Language Processing for Early Vocabulary Enhancement

  T. Hall, M. Valentini, E. Colunga, K. Kann