Welcome

I joined the University of Arizona School of Information in August 2016, after three years in Computer and Information Science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University’s Natural Language Processing group, Johns Hopkins University’s Human Language Technology Center of Excellence, KULeuven’s Language Intelligence and Information Retrieval group in Belgium, and the University of Colorado’s Center for Language and Education Research.

My research interests include natural language processing and machine learning theory and applications, including modeling the language of time and timelines, normalizing text to medical and geospatial ontologies, and information extraction models for clinical applications. There is a large community at the University of Arizona pursuing similar natural language processing research. Visit us at: http://nlp.arizona.edu/

My ongoing funded projects include:

• Extended Methods and Software Development for Health NLP (NIH NIGMS R01GM114355), in which we are designing machine learning algorithms that leverage large collections of text to improve information extraction tasks such as mapping text to ontologies and discovering links between health events.
• Temporal Relation Discovery for Clinical Text (NIH NLM R01LM010090), in which we are designing machine learning algorithms to extract timelines from clinical text and integrate those with structured data from the electronic medical record.
• Using Natural Language Processing to Determine Predictors of Healthy Diet and Physical Activity Behavior Change in Ovarian Cancer Survivors (NIH NCI R21CA256680), in which we are designing machine-learning algorithms to analyze conversations in behavioral interventions, with the goal of improving patient outcomes by improving how patients are coached.
• Global Reading and Assembly for Semantic, Probabilistic World Models (DARPA W911NF-18-1-0014), in which we are designing machine learning algorithms to infer from text the times and locations over which a causal relation is valid, with the goal of modeling complex interactions in domains like food security.
• A Data Science Platform and Mechanisms for Its Sustainability (NSF SMA RIDIR 1831551), in which we are designing information extraction algorithms to make it easier to search environmental impact statements.

My past funded projects include:

• Automated Domain Adaptation for Clinical Natural Language Processing (NIH NLM R01LM012918), in which we were designing algorithms that can improve machine learning models trained in one medical institution with data from another institution without any need for sharing of patient data.
• Voice Assistant for Data Entry and Recording (VADER; USAF SBIR FA8649-21-P-0834), in which we were designing speech-to-text algorithms to assist aircraft maintainers in logging their activities.