Dr. Slator studied Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Computing Research Laboratory (CRL) at New Mexico State University under Dr. Yorick Wilks. CRL was at the time rated among the top 5 AI research institutions in the world in Natural Language Processing. Dr. Slator was awarded a doctorate from the NMSU Computer Science Department in 1988.

Dr. Slator was a tenure-track faculty member at North Dakota State University for two years, 1988-1990, while also a summer research scientist at CRL. He then was on the research faculty at The Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern University for six years, 1990-1996. ILS was at one time the largest AI and Educational Media Research Center in the United States. Dr. Slator is currently, 1996-present, once again on the tenure-track faculty at North Dakota State University.

Dr. Slator's interests follow two diverse but related tracks:

Computational Linguistics, in particular lexical semantics, where his doctoral studies originated, and where he was an instrumental part of two NSF research grants (1989-1994). In January of 1996, MIT Press published his (co-authored with Dr. Yorick Wilks and Dr. Louise Guthrie) definitive survey of the field, "Electric Words: Dictionaries, Computers, and Meanings," and in the same month the Communications of the ACM published a survey article by the same authors; also in 1996, he co-edited a special theme issue of "IEEE Computer" devoted to Interactive Natural Language Processing which appeared in July 96.

Educational/Training Multimedia, currently his primary interest, in particular: virtual role-playing environments where students are immersed in authentic game-play simulations that teach real-world strategies, and domain specific concepts and procedures; and integrated performance support systems where users are provided job-aid systems that support work through an analysis of process and expert help and advice for just-in-time training in the workplace.

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