REU Site: Machine Learning in Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision

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The proposal seeks to increase the number of American citizens and permanent resident undergraduates who are attracted to careers in research and advanced studies in Computer Science. Training in theoretical and empirical machine learning will enable participants to contribute to ubiquitous software-based technologies at the highest levels in innovative ways. The proposal will also focus almost exclusively on training future computer scientists from institutions with limited research opportunities, women and under-represented minorities. The research experience will encourage these students to be productive researchers in academic and non-academic environments during their future careers. Computer vision, through applications such as face recognition and autonomous vehicles, has profound implications for society in terms of future of national security and transportation. Natural language processing, through applications such as efficient large volume semantic analysis and summarization of textual documents from disparate sources, also has implications for national security in addition to numerous other possibilities that can be exploited by industry. The objective of this proposal is to expose bright and motivated undergraduates who want to pursue advanced careers in Computer Science to active research experience early in their careers. This proposal seeks to develop an REU site to broaden the intellectual horizon of participants through exposure to opportunities available in university research. Students will be involved in research projects in machine learning techniques and in emerging applications that exploit machine learning. The applications of interest are in the fields of natural language processing and computer vision. Students will have the opportunity to utilize a combination of theoretical reading, analysis, and research within laboratory environments. The students will be introduced to the topics and helped to obtain in-depth understanding of selected topics through introductory presentations. Then, they will perform hands-on research on novel problems, conduct experiments, and communicate their results through written papers and presentations. The REU students will be involved in research in machine learning and its applications in diverse and emergent areas alongside faculty mentors and graduate students in a university environment. The research will involve undergraduate students in cutting-edge research where they will write software to solve interesting and timely problems and write papers for publication.