Suguru Ishizaki

Professor of English, Director of Professional & Technical Writing Programs, English

Area of Study

Humanities Analytics, Professional Writing, Rhetoric, Technical Writing and Communication

Bio

Suguru Ishizaki, Ph.D. specializes in writing, communication, and user experience design, with over three decades of experience in both academia and industry. He is currently a Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs its Professional & Technical Writing Programs.

His research focuses on designing AI-enhanced writing environments and computer-assisted rhetorical analysis. Over the years, he has published numerous articles in these areas. He is the author of Improvisational Design: Continuous, Responsive Digital Communication (MIT Press, 2003), an early exploration of Artificial Intelligence in communication design, and a co-author of The Power of Words: Unveiling the Speaker and Writer's Hidden Craft (Erlbaum, 2004) and Arab Women in Arab News: Old Stereotypes and New Media (Bloomsbury, 2012).

Prior to his current appointment, he was a senior staff engineer at Qualcomm, where he worked on research and development as well as product management of early mobile applications. He previously served as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon's School of Design. He earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. from MIT's Media Laboratory and is a past president of the IEEE Professional Communication Society.

 

Education

Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Media Laboratory

M.S. Visual Studies., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Media Laboratory

Bachelor of Arts and Design, University of Tsukuba

Curriculum Vitae

CV

Publications

Ishizaki, S., & López-Arroyo, B. (2026) From Sensory to Narrative: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Wine Tasting Notes in International Contexts. Journal of Business and Technical Communication.

Laudenbach, M., Brown, D., Guo, Z., Ishizaki, S., Reinhart, A., & Weinberg, G. (2024) Visualizing formative feedback in statistics writing: A case study of student motivation using DocuScope Write & Audit, Assessing Writing, vol. 60.

Wetzel, D., Brown, D., Werner N., Ishizaki, S., & Kaufer, D. (2021) Computer-Assisted Rhetorical Analysis: Instructional Design and Formative Assessment Using DocuScope. Journal of Writing Analytics. vol. 5, 292-393.

Beigman K. B., Ramineni, C., Kaufer, D., Yeoh, P., Ishizaki, S. (2019). Advancing the Validity Argument for Standardized Writing Tests using Quantitative Rhetorical Analysis. Language Testing, 36(1), 125-144.

Boettger, R. & Ishizaki S. (2018). Introduction to the Special Issue: Data-Driven Approaches to Research and Teaching in Professional and Technical Communication. (Eds. Boettger, R. Ishizaki, S.) IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. 61 (4).

Beigman Klebanov, B., Kaufer, D., Yeoh, P., Ishizaki, S., Holtzman, S. (2016). Argumentative writing in assessment and instruction: A comparative perspective. In Genre in Discourse and Cognition: Concepts, Modes, and Methods. Stukker, N., Spooren, W., & Steen, G. (eds.), Mouton de Gruyter.

Al-Malki, A., Kaufer, D., Ishizaki, S., & Dreher, K. (2012). Arab Women in Arab News: Old Stereotypes and New Media. London, UK: Bloomsbury.

Oh, Y., Ishizaki, S., Gross, M., & Do, E. Y.-L. (2012). A theoretical framework of design critiquing in architecture studios. Design Studies, 33(4), 302-325.

Ishizaki, S. (2011). Assessing typographic knowledge using timed tests. IEEE Transaction on Professional Communication, 54(2), 105-121.

Ishizaki, S., & Kaufer, D. (2011). DocuScope: Computer-aided rhetorical analysis. In P. McCarthy & C. Boonthum (Eds.), Applied Natural Language Processing and Content Analysis: Advances in Identification, Investigation, and Resolution (pp. 276-297). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Ishizaki, S. (2011, October). A model of aesthetic experience, in Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Professional Communication (IPCC 2011).

Ishizaki, S. (2009, July). Toward a unified theory of visual-verbal strategies in communication design. Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (IPCC 2009).

Kaufer, D., Ishizaki, S., Butler, B., & Collins, J. (2004). The Power of Words: Language and the Priming of Audience, Unveiling the Speaker and Writer’s Hidden Craft. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Ishizaki, S. (2003). Improvisational Design: Continuous, Responsive Digital Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ishizaki, S. (1997). Multiagent model of dynamic design: Visualization as an emergent behavior of active design agent. In M. N. Huhns & M. P. Singh (Eds.), Readings in Agents (pp. 172-180). San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann. (Originally published in Proceedings of ACM SIGCHI '96, April 1996.)