Multilinguality, Language Diversity, and Low-Resource Languages
Biography
Annie En-Shiun Lee is an Assistant Professor at Ontario Tech University (OTU) and a Status-only Assistant Professor at University of Toronto. Her goal is to make language technology as inclusive and accessible to as many people as possible. She directs the Lee Language Lab (L³), focusing on language diversity, multilinguality, and multiculturalism, aligning with OTU’s vision for “Tech with a Conscience”. Hers research has been published in Nature Digital Medicine, ACM Computing Surveys, *ACL, SIGCSE, IEEE TKDE, and Bioinformatics.
Dr. Lee is the demo co-chair for NAACL 2024 and has received numerous recognitions, including Outstanding Paper Award and Best Theme Paper Award at NAACL 2025, and the ARIA Spotlight Award for MScAC 2024, as well as nominations for the Tim McTiernan Student Mentorship Award 2025 and the Women in AI Researcher of the Year Award 2025.
She was an Assistant Professor (teaching stream) at the University of Toronto for the MScAC. She earned her PhD from the University of Waterloo, was a visiting researcher at the Fields Institute and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and worked as a research scientist at VerticalScope (Research lead) and Stradigi AI.
Research Interests
Multicultural Bias and Multimodal Applications
Pedagogy for Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning
Projects
Language Resources & Databases
URIEL+ World Language Database (COLING 2025)
Expanded typological and geographic language database with improved NLP integration. Includes a Python package for multilingual benchmarking, cross-lingual transfer, and dataset alignment.
IrokoBench (Outstanding Paper – NAACL 2024)
A comprehensive benchmark for evaluating large language models across African languages. Recognized with the Outstanding Paper Award at NAACL 2024 for advancing inclusive NLP evaluation.
Multimodal & Cultural AI
WorldCuisine (NAACL 2025 – Best Theme Paper)
1.2M image–question pairs across 30 languages, capturing global culinary knowledge. A benchmark for cross-cultural multimodal reasoning with applications in cultural AI research.
M4RAG
Multilingual multimodal retrieval-augmented generation framework extending RAG to cross-lingual and multimodal settings, enabling richer knowledge retrieval across languages and modalities.
M3R
Multilingual multimodal reasoning research examining LLM reasoning capabilities across languages and modalities, with a focus on cross-lingual generalization and low-resource settings.
Translation & Quality Estimation
TranslationCorrect (*ACL 2025)
Interactive translation quality assistant that detects and corrects machine translation errors. Enhances translator efficiency while maintaining linguistic fluency and semantic accuracy.
Multilingual Reasoning & Alignment
Multilingual Understanding and Reasoning of LLMs (Findings of EMNLP 2024)
Strengthens the multilingual understanding and reasoning capabilities of large language models, with a focus on low-resource languages.
AlignFreeze (NAACL 2025)
Freezes early transformer layers to preserve syntactic knowledge during fine-tuning. Boosts zero-shot and cross-domain performance with minimal additional training, improving stability and efficiency.
Performance Prediction & Efficiency
ProxyLM (Findings NAACL 2025)
A lightweight performance proxy that predicts LM accuracy using ~30× less compute. Enables faster model selection, fine-tuning, and prompt iteration while maintaining high predictive reliability.
MT Performance Prediction on Low-Resource Languages (EACL 2024)
Predicts machine translation performance on low-resource languages using language typology and similarity features, enabling efficient model selection without exhaustive evaluation.
Education & Language Learning
Teaching NLP
Award-winning Teaching NLP workshop on empowering multilinguality in NLP education. Showcases teaching strategies, open resources, and collaborative projects funded by NSERC USRA and the Fields Institute.
LinguaQuest
An RPG-style educational game for linguists, blending gamified learning with language exploration. Makes linguistic concepts engaging and accessible for learners at all levels.
Full list on Google Scholar
Browse the complete, up-to-date publication list, citations, and co-authors.
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Collaborations (Academic & Industry)
Propose joint research, co-supervision, visiting positions, R&D projects, evaluations, or joint award submissions with L³.
Undergraduate Students
Research and project opportunities for undergraduate students with L³.
MSc / PhD Applicants
Application process and requirements for graduate study with L³.
Letters of Recommendation (Former Students)
For former L³ students requesting an academic reference letter.
Teaching Experience
Ontario Tech University (OTU)
- CSCI 2000U – Scientific Data Analysis
- CSCI 4055U – Natural Language Processing (award-winning course)
- CSCI 4030U – Big Data Analytics
- CSCI 6720G – Advanced Topics in Information
University of Toronto
- CSC2701 – Communications for Computer Scientists
- CSC2702 – Technical Entrepreneurship
- CSC2703 – MScAC Internship (Content Curation)
- CSC401/2511 – Natural Language Computing
- Vector/DCS Machine Learning & Data Science Technology Upskilling Microcredentials
York University
- CSML 1010 – Applied Machine Learning and Lifecycle (Certificate in Machine Learning)
Students
David Anugraha
- Lead author: WorldCuisines & ProxyLM (Multilingual VQA, LM performance prediction).
- Co-author: URIEL+ Typological Knowledge Base.
- Co-author: MT performance on low-resource languages.
Enrique David Guzman Ramírez
- MScAC student, University of Toronto.
- Vector Scholarship in AI (2022–23).
Kosei Uemura
- Focus: Multilingual NLP & reasoning in LLMs.
- Lead author: AfriInstruct (instruction tuning for African languages).
- Co-author: Empowering the Future with Multilinguality & Language Diversity.
Mason Shipton
- Co-author: URIEL+ (8,000+ language vectors).
- Co-author: Empowering the Future (NLP course framework).
Labib Rahman
- ExploRIEL — UI with chatbot for URIEL+ language distances & vectors.
- SoulsBot+ — LLM-powered tutorial chatbot for Dark Souls: The Board Game.
- LinguaQuest — RPG-style educational game for linguists.
- Master’s student, Ontario Tech; researcher at Lee Lab & UXRLab.
Quang Phuoc Nguyen
- Data Selection for Multilingual Alignment — selects optimal languages for LM fine-tuning.
- Merlin: Curriculum Alignment — encoder–decoder stacking to improve multilingual alignment.
- Game Dialogue Translation — survey of LLM performance in game localization.
Malikeh Ehghaghi
- Benchmarking Interpretability in Healthcare Using Pattern Discovery and Disentanglement.
- Interpretable Disease Prediction from Clinical Text by Leveraging Pattern Disentanglement.
- PhD student, University of Toronto & Vector Institute (R3 Lab, Prof. Colin Raffel).
- Vice-Chair, ACM-W Toronto; Co-host, Cost of Women in AI Research.
Amane Takeuchi
- Research Project Lead & RA (ML model interpretation in clinical apps, NLP, CS education & EDI; PyTorch).
- BSc Applied Math; Specialist Data Science; Major CS; Minor Math — University of Toronto (Dean’s List 2023).
- Vice-Chair & Career Event Director, UofT Japan Network; TA for MAT135/136/235.
Tong Su
- MSc Advanced Computer Science, University of Oxford (2024–2025).
- Former Full-Stack Developer, Northbridge Financial (Angular, Django, .NET; 10,000+ users).
- TA & Course Supporter, University of Toronto (Python, Unix/Git, Research Software).
- Research Assistant (Lee Lab & AI for Justice): PEFT for low-resource NMT; first author — NAACL 2024.
- Passed CFA Program Level I (Oct 2024).
Syed Mekhael Wasti
- Lead author, *ACL 2025 demo: TranslationCorrect.
- Co-author, TeachNLP 2024: Multilinguality paper.
- MSc, Queen’s University (Vector Scholar), Fall 2025.
Hasti Toossi
- Research: NLP; Programming Languages (Type Theory).
- Recent graduate, University of Toronto.
Aditya Khan
- A Faculty Initiative Addressing Gender Disparity — ACM GCEC 2024.
- URIEL+ — COLING 2025.
- Honours BSc graduate, University of Toronto — Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science.
Eric Khiu
- URIEL+ — COLING 2025.
- Reproducibility Study on Language Similarity (URIEL) — NAACL SRW 2024.
- Predicting MT Performance on Low-Resource Languages — EACL 2024.
Vincent Shuai
- Student Engagement Award (2024), University of Toronto CS.
Shou-Yi Hung (Ray)
- Faculty Initiative on Gender Disparity — ACM GCEC 2024.
- TranslationCorrect — ACL Demo 2025.
- SiniticMTError dataset — COLM WMDQS Workshop 2025.
Awards
Awards & Recognitions:- Nominee – Women in AI Researcher of the Year Award (2025)
- ARIA Spotlight Award – Master of Science in Applied Computing (2024)
- Nominee – Tim McTiernan Student Mentorship Award (2024)
- Best Audience Award – Teaching NLP for "Empowering Multilinguality"
- Canadian Association for University Continuing Education Program Award (2020)
- Canada Foundation for Innovation – The John R. Evans Leaders Fund (PI): Infrastructure for Low-Resource Efficient Scalable LLM Benchmark and Evaluation; 2025; $140,000 and O&M $77,000.
- NSERC Discovery Grant (PI): A Novel Paradigm for Advancing Low-Resource Languages – Uncovering Factors and Expanding Large Language Models; $155,000 with Discovery Launch Supplement $12,500; 2024.
- NSERC Idea to Innovation (Collaborator): Pattern Discovery and Disentanglement – An Interpretable Multi-Modal AI Platform; $124,000; 2023.
- Lacuna Funding (Collaborator): Training and Evaluation Datasets for African Languages, Masakhane Natural Language Understanding, Conversational AI, and Benchmark for African Languages; $207,000; 2024.