Conference: Text As Data Conference 2022

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

There is an increasing need for connections between natural language processing (NLP) and social science. Recent advances in NLP have the potential to revolutionize how we study human society, and NLP research needs input from social science to use new developments effectively, reliably, and equitably. But bringing together these two fields is hard due to differences in priorities, vocabulary, and communication styles. Opportunities to meet and work across these boundaries are rare, and even rarer for PhD students. The New Directions in Analyzing Text as Data (TADA) meeting has developed into a leading forum that brings these communities together, attracting top researchers from both sides. Holding a doctoral consortium at TADA 2022 initiates a new outreach effort to broaden participation at the meeting. By attending this doctoral consortium, computer and information science students benefit from the practical applications and theoretical perspectives offered by social scientists, and social science students benefit by learning about new computational methods to support their research involving text data. The doctoral consortium that this award supports will bring together doctoral students working in computer and information science and those working in various areas of social science. Participating doctoral students are paired with faculty mentors in the complementary discipline, thus providing for each student a novel perspective that is likely to be both challenging and inspirational. Funding is used primarily to support students to attend and fully participate in the meeting, where they are given an opportunity to present their current work and receive individual mentoring. Mentors are selected from more senior researchers who have attended previous TADA meetings. These mentorship pairings are expected to significantly impact the direction of ongoing doctoral research, bringing natural language processing and social science closer together and creating a community with diverse young leaders who can fluently communicate across disciplines. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.