Zakaria Kurdi, Ph.D., pursues research at the intersection of applied natural language processing (NLP) and text mining, with a focus on real-world applications. His work explores how NLP can be leveraged in healthcare, particularly in the early detection and analysis of conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and psychological disorders. He is also passionate about advancing language education through the development of complexity-based content recommendation systems, helping tailor educational materials to the language proficiency levels of learners. 

Dr. Kurdi has extensive experience in education and research, and has held several administrative roles within educational institutions, including serving as department chair on three separate occasions in previous appointments.  

He is the author of a two-volume introductory book on Natural Language Processing that is published in both English and French. Dr. Kurdi’s research has received multiple accolades, including several awards and nominations.  

• 2024 nomination to the Research Mentoring award, University of Lynchburg.  

• 2022 nomination to Virginia’s Outstanding Faculty Award, The State Council of Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV).  

• 2022 Best Paper Award, International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Mining, MLDM 22.  

• 2019 Nominated for the Best Paper Award International FLAIRS conference, Sarasota, FL.  

• 2017 Best Paper Award ICISDM conference, Charleston, SC.