NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute (EAPSI) for FY 2013 in Japan

Petinot Yves, New Brunswick NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds Yves Petinot of Columbia University to conduct a research project in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering area during the summer of 2013 at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics in Tokyo, Japan. The project title is "Hierarchical Language Models for Natural Language Generation and Web Summarization." The host scientist is Professor Daichi Mochihashi. This research project aims at developing and evaluating hierarchical models of natural language that can support the statistical generation of human-readable sentences, and in particular, of Web gists. Web gists are static, typically single-sentence long summaries of Web Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). The project explores statistical and machine learning approaches to automatically predict how elements of language appear in Web gists. Organically available Web resources, including hierarchy-based Web directories, are being used as a basis for learning and experimental validation. Broader impacts of an EAPSI fellowship include providing the Fellow a first-hand research experience outside the U.S.; an introduction to the science, science policy, and scientific infrastructure of the respective location; and an orientation to the society, culture and language. These activities meet the NSF goal to educate for international collaborations early in the career of its scientists, engineers, and educators, thus ensuring a globally aware U.S. scientific workforce. Furthermore, this research project aims at facilitating the large-scale, efficient and non-biased discovery of information and services accessible through the Web both by human and machine agents.