Speaker: Adam Poliak, Barnard College
Title: Limits and Applications of Natural Language Processing
The seminar will be available for Zoom participation. People in the Barnard/Columbia community who have authorized access to Barnard indoor spaces can participate in person if desired. If you would like to receive the Zoom link, please register using the “Register” button above.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a branch of Artificial Intelligence that aims to build machines that humans can seamlessly interact with through spoken and written language. As NLP becomes more ubiquitous in our daily lives, through technologies like Google Translate and Apple’s Siri, understanding the limits of these systems is critical. In the first half of the talk, we will cover my work developing diagnostics that test such systems. With the remaining time, we will discuss how my research group has applied Natural Language Processing to leverage data from social media (e.g. Twitter and Reddit) in fields like psychology, public health, and nursing.
Adam Poliak completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University where he was a member of the Center for Language and Speech Processing. He is currently a Roman Family Faculty Fellow at Barnard College, Columbia University in the Computer Science Program where he teaches courses in Data Science and runs a research group focused on Natural Language Processing. He has done research stints at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Bloomberg L.P., and the Human Language Technology Center of Excellence. Adam's research has been funded by the FDA, Google, Columbia School of Nursing, and DARPA, and others. Prior to graduate school, Adam spent time at numerous start-ups.