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We are pleased to announce that Roi Reichart, Professor in the Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Schmidt Career Advancement Chair in AI, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of TACL (Transactions of the ACL), has been elected an Academician of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (WAAC) in recognition of his systematic contributions to language and AI, interpretability, and robust learning.
Over many years, Professor Reichart has pursued a program centered on “language—interpretability—robustness,” building an evidence chain from methods to applications: at CoNLL 2017 he proposed Neural Structural Correspondence Learning (NSCL) for cross-domain representation learning and transfer; at ACL 2019 he constructed and studied a zero-shot semantic parsing task and dataset; at NAACL 2025 he provided a stakeholder-centric survey of model interpretability in the LLM era (awarded Best Paper in the Model Analysis and Interpretability track). In addition, as a co-author of a survey on causal inference × NLP, he has advanced a unified perspective on leveraging causal methods to improve model robustness, fairness, and interpretability. Collectively, these works offer testable computational models and experimental pathways for understanding and engineering “consciousness cues” in complex artificial systems—such as selective responses, resource allocation, and global coordination. The Technion NLP Lab likewise designates interpretability and robustness as core research directions, sustaining cross-lingual, cross-domain, and interdisciplinary progress.
- Global Collaboration and Academic Ecosystem
Academicians of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness hail from institutions such as Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Cambridge, the University of California, the French Academy of Sciences, the University of Padua, the University of Queensland, Columbia University, and the University of Exeter. Honorary Academicians come from a wide range of countries and regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Spain, and China. In addition, leading scientists from prominent research institutes and technology companies—such as Google, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and ZEEKR—also participate.
- About WAAC
The World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (https://www.waac.ac/) is a global academic institution established in Paris in 2025. Its mission is to advance frontier research and international collaboration in artificial consciousness through the integration of science, technology, and philosophy. The Academy publishes open research, policy recommendations, evaluation standards, and more. The current President is Academician Yucong Duan, and the Secretary-General is Dr. Yingbo Li. The Honorary Academician List: On May 3, 2025, WAAC released its first batch of Top 100 Honorary Academicians, recognizing scholars who have made foundational or leading contributions to the theory of artificial consciousness.