I hope this FAQ is helpful. For prospective Ph.D. students, I'd also
like to recommend this nice article
on choosing a
Ph.D. program in Computer Science, which contains a lot of
information applicable to other disciplines, as well.
For a much more general and comprehensive discussion of graduate
school and life in academia, I recommend Cynthia Verba,
Scholarly
Pursuits: A Guide to Professional Development During the Graduate
Years
Sorry to be strict about this, but I will immediately delete
any e-mail inquiries that are not addressed to me personally.
I'm interested in prospective Linguistics or CS students who have both
strong computational skills and a deep interest in human language.
I'm pretty open minded about potential topics, but the following are the areas for
which I am most likely to consider taking new students.
Also see my recent publications, as well as
the CLIP Laboratory Research Page
for a description of research areas in our lab.
Generally the answer is no. Three to six months is not enough time to
create and execute a high quality research project starting from
scratch. If you are an excellent programmer with significant
non-classroom experience in NLP --- for example, at least a
year working on NLP within industry, or published work with an
established NLP researcher --- and you are happy to serve
mainly as a programmer, writing code for someone else's research
project, then get in touch and I'll see if there is a suitable
project. When you write, make your relevant experience
immediately clear in your cover letter.
I'm happy to consider
the possibility. I've had good experiences mentoring undergrad
researchers, usually people with strong computational background.
I've sent undergrads on to excellent industry positions (e.g. at
BBN) and grad schools (e.g. JHU, MIT, UMichigan), and I'm generally
happy to talk. Send me your resume and let me know a bit about your
background and what kind of research might interest you.
I'm happy to consider the possibility. Please send me e-mail with
information about your background, and the kind of research you're
interested in.
I generally do not take on research assistants whose main focus is
outside of NLP or computational linguistics. If you have already
taken some relevant coursework and are seriously interested in
changing fields, please send me e-mail with information about
your background, the kind of research you're interested in, and why
you're interested in making the change.
First, an important thing to note: UMD does not offer degrees
specifically in computational linguistics or NLP. Students interested
in these topics typically enroll in the Ph.D. program in either Linguistics, Computer Science, or at the iSchool (i.e. College of Information
Studies). Each of those departments offers information for
prospective students on its Web page. I have advised or co-advised
students from all of these departments.
The only real way to get an answer to this question is to apply to a
Ph.D. program here. In general, students who work with me have a
strong background in computer science, as well as some exposure to
linguistics. The ideal student for me in the Linguistics Department
tends to be a really strong computer scientist who is so in love with
language that they want the degree in Linguistics rather than CS.
Regardless of department, the strongest applicants will have an
established track record in computational linguistics research,
e.g. co-authorship on papers published at first-tier conferences like
ACL, HLT, and EMNLP.
An important note for Computer Science applicants:
The CS department here will often admit strong students regardless of
whether or not they are matched in advance with a specific advisor.
For many (even most) students in CS, the first year (or sometimes two
years) involves a "shopping around" process where students get to know
potential advisors and vice versa. So getting admitted to CS isn't
the same as signing up with a particular advisor, even if that advisor
was mentioned in your application. If you're admitted to the
department and you're interested in working with me, please make sure
you've discussed your interest with me personally.
Regarding qualifications, as I noted above, I am most interested in
students who have both a strong computational background and a deep
interest in human language. If you're not a decent programmer, you're
probably going to have a hard time working with me on the kinds of
work I want to be doing. That doesn't mean I absolutely won't "click"
with a student who's got a less directly relevant background, if they
have a really strong intellectual spark, but those are exceptional
cases.
I am sometimes asked by undergraduates interested in computational
linguistics what courses they should take, prior to grad school
applications, to better prepare themselves. First of all, bravo!
That's a good question to be asking, especially if you're asking it
early enough to do something about it. In order of priority, I think
the following are probably where you should focus.
I cannot tell you your chances of being admitted. This depends not
only on your background, but on many interacting details of the
admissions process within each department, including the other
applicants that year. And from year to year, it is very difficult to
say whether or not I will be taking new students.
This depends on your background and your goals. These programs are
all quite competitive, so you'll want to apply to a department where
your background provides a good chance of being accepted. Also think
about your goals. If you're thinking about eventually going into
academia, what kind of department do you imagine yourself applying to?
During your grad school experience, you'll be taking a variety of
required and elective courses outside your research area -- do you
want to be a department where required coursework explores things like
semantics and phonology, or one where you'll be spending time on
things like databases and recursion theory?
If this is a question you're asking, it probably couldn't hurt you to
look at this nice article on choosing a
Ph.D. program in Computer Science, which contains a lot of
information applicable to other disciplines, as well.
Generally if I have an open postdoc position, I'll advertise on the
CORPORA mailing list. On the other hand, I'm always happy to hear
from people who are finishing up their Ph.D. if their research
interests are closely aligned with mine. Send me some mail and tell
me about yourself. Please include a current c.v.
I am unlikely to host visitors if I do not personally know them or
their advisor. The best way to approach this is by asking your
advisor to introduce us.