Dr. Graesser is presently a full professor in the Department of Psychology, an adjunct professor in Computer Science, and co-director of the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. In 1977 Dr. Graesser received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at San Diego. He was a visiting researcher at Yale University in 1983, Stanford University in 1984, and Carnegie Mellon University in 1991.

Dr. Graesser’s primary research interests are in cognitive science, discourse processing, and the learning sciences. More specific interests include knowledge representation, question asking and answering, tutoring, text comprehension, inference generation, conversation, reading, education, memory, expert systems, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction.

He served as editor of the journal Discourse Processes (1996–2005) and is the current editor of Journal of Educational Psychology. He is president of the Society for Text and Discourse and Artificial Intelligence in Education. In addition to publishing over 400 articles in journals, books, and conference proceedings, he has written two books and edited nine books (one being the Handbook of Discourse Processes). He has designed, developed, and tested cutting-edge software in learning, language, and discourse technologies, including AutoTutor, Coh-Metrix, HURA Advisor, SEEK Web Tutor, MetaTutor, ARIES, Question Understanding Aid (QUAID), QUEST, and Point&Query.