2012 Department of Computer Science
Prof. T. Florian Jaeger
Department of Computer Science,
Human Language Processing Lab
tiflo@cs.rochester.edu
Research Project: Development of Web-Based Software for Experiments on Language Production and Perception
We are looking for undergraduates who want to participate in the development of web-based software to conduct psycholinguistic experiments (e.g. via MTurk and Facebook).
For example, we have here's an applet we use to teach people miniature languages over the web: http://www.hlp.rochester.edu/mturk/WOACQ.1/wo_example.html. This tool has been used to collect data from hundreds of people within a few days that allows us to study to what extent there are universal biases operating during language acquisition:
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Fedzechkina, M., Jaeger, T.F. & Newport, E. (2011). Functional Biases in Language Learning: Evidence from Word Order and Case-Marking Interaction. The 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci11).Boston, MA. July, 2011. [paper (pdf)] [BibTeX]
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Tily, H.J., Frank, M.C. & Jaeger, T.F. (2011). The learnability of constructed languages reflects typological patterns. The 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci11). Boston, MA. July, 2011. [paper (pdf)] [BibTeX]
We have also used it to study iterative learning over generations of learners and currently we are using this tool to investigate online inferences during language comprehension (we are testing certain theories that hold that the human brain employ Bayesian inference during language understanding).
As part of a 5-year NSF project, we will continue to develop this applet to include:
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speech recording (probably using WAMI and the WAMI speech recorder, https://code.google.com/p/wami-recorder/)
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speech synthesis based on recorded samples from the participant; e.g. to study different phonetic cues affect speech perception
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video recording; this would allow us to use WebCams for rudimentary eye-tracking
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communication between several participants in our language games (chat client); this would allow us to investigate how language and other social conventions develop over time depending on how they are being used
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We are also interested in developing efficient ways to Mechanical Turk to automatically annotate the speech data we receive from our hundreds of participants.
We're looking for highly qualified undergraduate researchers that want to develop components to this software. You will also have a chance to conduct your own experiments, to be part of an interdisciplinary team of cognitive scientists, and - if there is interest- to be involved in the design and write-up of studies. Several of our previous RAs have won awards and travel funding to international conferences and/or have published their results in peer journals.
You can join the lab via independent research in CS or BCS. Funding pending we also will have a NSF-funded (REU) research position, which require a one-year commitment of 5-10h per week plus summer research time.
Desired Experience: Fluency in at least one of Flash, JavaScript, Java
Prof. Michael Scott
Department of Computer Science
scott@cs.rochester.edu
Research Project: Multicore Concurrency
Multicore processors, which are essentially multiple processors on a single chip, are now ubiquitous, and the number of cores per chip is expected to grow significantly over time. To use these chips effectively, programmers must write multithreaded programs -- historically a very complex task. The URCS Concurrency Group aims to simplify this task, making the power of multicore chips available to as wide an audience as possible. Specific projects include:
Transactional memory:
Much of the complexity of concurrent programming comes from using locks to synchronize (coordinate) activity across threads. Transactional memory is a higher-level abstraction that simplifies synchronization. Using the compiler and runtime infrastructure of the Rochester Software Transactional Memory (RSTM) system, students will develop and evaluate innovative multicore applications.
Concurrency in scripting languages:
Much of the most exciting programming language research today uses languages like Python, Perl, Ruby, and R, none of which has good support for concurrency. Students will help design and implement mechanisms that bring state-of-the-art concurrent programming to these new, dynamic languages.
Prerequisite: CSC 252 (Computer Organization) or equivalent experience.
Prof. Jeffrey P. Bigham
Department of Computer Science
jbigham@cs.rochester.edu
Research Project: Real-time Human Computation
Over the past few years, human computation -- integrating the intelligence and decision-making skills of people in computational processes -- has been shown a practical means to add true intelligence to computer programs today. As an example, computer vision is difficult, and so it can make sense to have a computer program query humans out on the web when it needs information about an image, instead of trying to do this automatically. Research goals include (i) developing methods for quickly integrating the input of dynamic pools of workers into actionable decisions, (ii) designing and implementing toolkits that enable developers to easily include real-time human computation as part of their own programs, and (iii) devising methods for estimating the expected latency for answers from different sources of human computation from past experience. Students working on this project will participate in the design of methods for achieving effective real-time computation and contribute to an open source toolkit allowing others to use real-time human computation in their own projects.
Research Project: Human-Backed Access Technology
The past few decades have seen the development of wonderful new computing technology that serves as sensors onto an inaccessible world for disabled people - as examples, optical character recognition (OCR makes printed text available to blind people, speech recognition makes spoken language available to deaf people, and way-finding systems help keep people with cognitive impairments on track. Despite advances, this technology remains both too prone to errors and too limited in the scope of problems it can reliably solve to address the problems faced by disabled people in their everyday lives. A promising approach for enabling people with disabilities to take advantage of this technology now is to let the error-prone technology fall back to human-powered services when it fails. For instance, if an OCR program is unable to recognize text, it may query always-available workers on services like Amazon's Mechanical Turk. In this project, students will extend an iPhone application that we have created called VizWiz that lets blind users take a picture, speak a question, and receive answers back in less than 30 seconds from workers on the web. Students will add in new automatic services, such as OCR and simple computer vision components (color detection, darkness detection, etc), and enable questions to be sent to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Students will need to address the research and design challenge of helping users decide where to send their questions based on dimensions such as latency, accuracy, privacy, and anonymity.
Research Project: Cloud-Based Assistive Technology in the Classroom
Millions of students with disabilities in the United States use assistive technology programs to help them use computers and learn classroom material. These programs range from screen reader programs that convert the visual information on a computer screen to audible speech for blind people, to speech recognition programs that enable people with physical disabilities to control their computers, to reading programs that speak and highlight words as students read. A primary problem with this technology is that it is not available on every computer that students access, and, even when the technology is there, the specific settings and preferences of the students must be repeated. A promising solution to these problems is to host assistive technology in the cloud so it can be accessed from anywhere and from any device with a web browser. In this project, students will design and build web applications that can replicate the complex, multimodal transformations of traditional assistive technologies within the restrictive web sandbox, and investigate the potential of these web applications by disabled students in local schools.
