Alona’s PhD is from the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University where she was advised by Tom Mitchell. Alona studies semantics (language meaning) and semantic composition (building more complex meaning by combining words), both in the brain and by using large text datasets. Alona grew up in Edmonton, AB, Canada, and has a nearly nuclear family consisting of a husband, daughter, dog and cat. Aside from keeping animals and children alive, Alona’s hobbies include knitting, painting and generally making things out of other things.