Noah Smith

Teaching

Active courses at CMU:

• Algorithms for NLP (with Alon Lavie and Bob Frederking): NLP course for graduate students.
  Offered every fall, including 2013.
• Structured Prediction for Language and Other Discrete Data (with William Cohen): advanced NLP/machine learning course for graduate students.
  Offered approximately every two years, including Fall 2013.
• NLP: introductory course for undergraduates.
  Offered every spring; next expected offering is Spring 2014.
• Advanced NLP Seminar: readings in NLP and computational linguistics.
  Offered approximately once a year, including Fall 2013.
• NLP Lab: hands-on experience developing NLP algorithms, for graduate students.
  Offered every spring; next expected offering is 2014.

• NLP Demystified (June 28, 2013): brief tutorial on three common paradigms for solving problems in NLP, presented at the NSF SoCS PI meeting
• Structured Sparsity in NLP (NAACL, June 3, 2012, with André Martins and Mário Figueiredo): a tutorial on models, algorithms, and applications of structured sparsity in NLP
• Probability and Structure in NLP (July–August 2012): a three-day course presented at the International Summer School in Language and Speech Technologies
  (earlier version from May 2011, with Shay Cohen at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center)
• Sequence Models (July 2011 and July 2012): a three-hour lecture at the Lisbon Machine Learning Summer School (watch a video of the lecture here)
• Structured Prediction for NLP (ICML, June 14, 2009): a tutorial on statistical models for linguistic structure

• Probabilistic Graphical Models: advanced graduate course in machine learning, taught Fall 2010
• Text-Driven Forecasting: seminar-project hybrid course for graduate students, taught Fall 2009
• Language and Statistics II: advanced statistical NLP for graduate students, taught Fall 2006, Fall 2007, Fall 2008, and Fall 2009
• Empirical Research Methods in Computer Science (JHU, Fall 2005)
• Computational Genomics: Sequence Modeling (JHU, Fall 2004)
• Hidden Markov Models: All the Glorious Gory Details (October, 2004)
• Log-Linear Models (December, 2004)
• Predicting English (JHU CLSP summer workshop lab with Jason Eisner, Summers 2002 and 2003, taught by others since); read the paper

Research in NLP (Natural Language Processing)

How can computer programs intelligently process text data? My research brings together linguistic abstractions, statistical reasoning, and computational formalisms to develop general NLP methods and models. The results are used in software applications (e.g., machine translation, information extraction, text mining, question answering, and text-driven forecasting) and also serve scientific discovery wherever text serves as data (e.g., sociolinguistics, political science, and economics).

• My group is Noah's ARK. Want to join? Find out how!
• In 2011 I published a book, Linguistic Structure Prediction.
• I write papers (organized by date, by topic, or by Google).

Curriculum vitae highlights

See also: biographical blurbs and long C.V.

• 2006: joined CMU faculty
• 2006: Ph.D. in Computer Science, JHU, affiliated with the CLSP
• 2004: interned at Microsoft Research
• 2002: junior research scientist at NYU
• 2001–6: Hertz Foundation Fellowship
• 2001: B.A. in Linguistics and B.S. in Computer Science, U. Maryland
• 2000: visiting student, U. Edinburgh
• 1999: participant, JHU CLSP summer workshop
• 1997–2001: Banneker/Key Scholarship, U. Maryland
• 1996: performer, North Sea and Montreux Jazz Festivals, with the Glenelg Jazz Ensemble
• 1992: visiting student, Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College)

Miscellany

• remembering my Dad, Wayne
• my cousin Karen can help you write your crime novel
• advice for undergrads and about choosing a grad school
• academic geneaology
• recommended hotels for swimmers