Brian Dillon Awarded Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship
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Professor Brian Dillon, director of the Cognitive Science of Language Lab, chair of the Personnel Committee, and undergraduate advisor in the Department of Linguistics at UMass Amherst, has been selected as one of three recipients of the 2025 Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship.
The fellowship provides tenured faculty members with a one-year release from teaching and service responsibilities, as well as a $3,500 cash award, to support their research or creative work. It is administered by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement.
During his fellowship year, Dillon will collaborate with Tal Linzen of New York University on a research project that examines how large language models differ from humans in resolving syntactic and semantic ambiguity.
Dillon holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a BA from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research focuses on psycholinguistics, particularly how native speakers use cognitive resources like attention and memory to interpret language. He directs the Cognitive Science of Language laboratory in the Department of Linguistics.
Previous Conti Fellows from the department include Lisa Green (2017), Peggy Speas (2006), Angelika Kratzer (1999), John McCarthy (1997), Lyn Frazier (1993), Lisa Selkirk (1991), Tom Roeper (1989), Emmon Bach (1982), and Barbara Partee (1981).