She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University, with a specialization in linguistics. She works on theoretical and knowledge-oriented aspects of developing language-enabled intelligent agents. She has led several knowledge acquisition and annotation projects, including the development of a general-purpose workbench for developing computationally-tractable descriptions of lesser-studied languages. A special area of Dr. McShane’s interest is reference resolution, particularly its more difficult aspects, such as ellipsis and referential vagueness. She has published two books and over 60 scientific papers.