The 2016 NAACL Student Research Workshop

Brandeis University, Waltham MA

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal requests funding to subsidize travel, conference and housing expenses of students selected to participate in the NAACL-HLT 2016 Student Research Workshop, which will take place during the main NAACL-HLT conference June 12 - June 17, 2016 in San Diego, California. The annual meeting of its North American chapter of the Association of Computational Linguistics (NAACL) is one of the most prestigious and selective international conferences in these fields. The Student Research Workshop (SRW) is an established tradition at ACL and NAACL conferences, allowing students to present their research and receive feedback from senior researchers. The Student Research Workshop provides a valuable research opportunity for students at different stages (undergraduate students, early graduate students and advanced graduate students) of their academic careers, and contributes to the development of a skilled and diverse computational linguistics and natural language processing workforce. This year, two of the student organizers are women, which will help promote and broaden the participation of women in natural language processing and computational linguistics. The NAACL-HLT 2016 Student Research Workshop (SRW) encourages submissions in three categories: 1) thesis proposals, for advanced students who have decided on a thesis topic and wish to get feedback on their proposal and research direction; 2) research papers, for graduate students to present either completed work or work in progress that has already achieved preliminary results; 3) undergraduate research papers, for undergraduate students to present their work. Each accepted paper will be assigned a mentor who will meet with the student during the NAACL conference and provide individual feedback. By including students at different stages of their academic careers (undergraduate students, early graduate students and advanced graduate students) and by encouraging a spirit of collaborative research, the Student Research Workshop aims to build a supportive environment for a new generation of computational linguists. In addition, the SRW is organized by students themselves, advised by two senior researchers in the field. The students who are involved in running and reviewing for the workshop have ample opportunities to interact with the researchers on the organizing committee of the main conference. The opportunities for interaction with other students and with senior researchers will positively influence the students? experience in research and will likely inspire many to devote further effort to academic studies and careers.