My Biography

I have been working for decades on new ways to solve humanities problems of practical interest using computers. Most of my work has focused on determining the authorship of a document via stylometry (the study and measurement of writing style). Using this technology, I have been able to identify J.K. Rowling's use of a pen name to write The Cuckoo's Calling, to testify about judicial misconduct in Chevron Corp. v. Donziger, and to help a refugee remain in the United States in Federal Immigration Court. Some of the software I have helped to create is available for use under an open-source license from www.jgaap.com.  I and colleagues also do forensic linguistic consulting under the name Juola & Associates (juolaassociates.com)

I'm very excited to announce that I will spending the spring of 2025 at ELTE (​Eötvös Loránd University), in Budapest, Hungary, as part of a 2024-5 Fulbright Fellowship!  If you are located in Europe and would like to meet in person, and/or would like me to speak at your lab/department/school, please reach out!

The key insight that guides my research is that there are lots of ways to say or write the same message, and people are free to choose from among many different ways to express the same ideas. Frequently-made choices become habits, and habits can be picked up by looking at other things a person has said or written, so a piece of writing that shows the same habitual choices is likely to be a piece of writing by the same person.

I received my Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder (USA) in 1995, then worked for three years as a postdoctoral researcher in the department of experimental psychology at Oxford University (UK). Since 1998, I have been working at Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) in the mathematics and computer science department, where I currently hold the Joseph A. Lauritis, C.S.Sp. Endowed Chair in Teaching and Technology

Education
B.S. (Electrical Engineering and Mathematics) The Johns Hopkins University (1987)
M.S. (Computer Science)  The University of Colorado at Boulder (1991)
M.S. (Cognitive Science) The University of Colorado at Boulder (1993)
Ph.D. (Computer Science) The University of Colorado at Boulder (1995)