Paul D. Deane, a principal research scientist in the Research & Development division at ETS, earned a Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Chicago in 1987. He is author of Grammar in Mind and Brain, a study of the interaction of cognitive structures in syntax and semantics, and the second author of Vocabulary Assessment to Support Instruction. He taught English composition and linguistics at the University of Central Florida from 1986 to 1994. From 1994 to 2001, he worked in industrial natural language processing, where he focused on lexicon development, parser design, and semantic information retrieval. He joined ETS in 2001.
His current research interests include formative assessment design in the English language arts, cognitive models of writing skill, automated essay scoring, and vocabulary assessment. During his career at ETS, he has worked on a variety of natural language processing (NLP) and assessment projects, including automated item generation, tools to support verbal test development, scoring of collocation errors, reading and vocabulary assessment, and automated essay scoring. His work currently focuses on the assessment of English language arts skills and the analysis of writing traits (focusing both on the writing process, using digital logs, and NLP analysis of student texts).