Curriculum Vitae

Education

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  1994: S.B. in Computer Science and Computer Engineering
  
  Undergraduate thesis: AMAR: A Computational Model of Autosegmental Phonology--A more or less complete implementation of the mechanics of autosegmental phonology. Allows the user to create a description of the phonology of a language. The program is then able to generate surface representations from underlying representations.
  
• UCLA
  

  1998: M.A. in Linguistics. Thesis: Evaluation, Implementation, and Extension of Primitive Optimality Theory
  1999: C.Phil. in Linguistics
  2005: Ph.D. in Linguistics. Dissertation: Studies in Computational Optimality Theory, with Special Reference to the Phonological System of Malagasy

  Employment Experience

• 99-present: Chief Scientist, Cognition Technologies (Our search engine).  The company was previously called Quester, before that MeaningMaster, before that InQuizit Technologies, and before I came on it was Intelligent Text Processing.  Took InQuizit's natural language search engine and scaled it from something that could only operate on kilobytes of text, with searches taking half a minute or so per search, to something that can handle hundreds of gigabytes of text with sub-second search timing.  Implemented fuzzy search, phonetic search, wildcard search, advanced SQL-like search and auto-completion based on a compact prefix-tree string automaton I developed.  Developed speech recognition interfaces for intelligent widgets using natural language understanding technology, applied compression techniques to parts of the search engine (dictionary, sense disambiguation component and index), and developed a robust system for indexing large bodies of information.  Developed a web spider, a load-balancing query brokering system for the search engine, and a network protocol for the search engine's internal communications. Ported the search engine from Windows NT to UNIX (Linux and Solaris).  Moved the company into source code management, bug tracking, cross-platform GUI toolkits, etc.  Worked on Bayesian email classification, many other projects.
  
• 00: Linguistics Department, UCLA.  Developing tree software for teaching undergraduate syntax.
  
• 00: Linguistics Department, UCLA.  Teaching Assistant for Computational Linguistics I (C185A).
  
• 99: Linguistics Department, UCLA.  Teaching Assistant for Introduction to the Study of Language (LING 1).
  
• 98-99: Linguistics/Biology/Psychology Departments, UCLA.  Research Assistant for Learning and Information Systems project.
  
• 99: Linguistics Department, UCLA.  Teaching Assistant for Undergraduate Phonology I (120A).
  
• 98-99: Linguistics Department, UCLA.  Programmer (RA).  Developed PhonologyPad software (an implementation of traditional rewrite-rule phonology) for teaching undergraduate phonology.
  
• 98: Linguistics Department, UCLA.  Teaching Assistant for Undergraduate Phonology II (165A), Spring Quarter.
  
• 97: Latin American Center, UCLA.  Developed Quecha vocabulary reference for use in Quecha language instruction at UCLA.
  
• 96-97: Linguistics Department, UCLA     Graduate Technology Consultant     (GTC)  
• 95: RA in Phonetics Training, UCLA.
  
• 94-95: CAS, Inc. Programmer/Analyst.
  Implemented a system that allows the Extended Air Defense Simulator, the Computer Adjunct Data Evaluator-X, and other such constructive and live simulators to interoperate over global networks on a single, virtual battlefield using Distributed Interactive Simulations (DIS) technology. Also worked on additions to the Extended Air Defense Simulator, wrote software for use in analysis of PATRIOT missile performance, and wrote software to analyze electronic warfare data.
  
• 90-92: C. S. Draper Labs . Programmer.
  Wrote automated testing system for a Computer Aided Software Engineering tool that creates programs in C or Ada from Engineering Block Diagrams, at the same time creating documentation for the programs, performing software management, and doing automated testing of the programs. Worked on porting the CASE tool from Lisp machines to Sun workstations by rewriting the windowing system in X windows. The system is being used by NASA, Boeing, and others.
  
• Intermediate years and previous: student, other miscellaneous jobs, mostly data entry.

Honors and Publications

• National Merit Finalist
  
• Recipient, William Martin Memorial Thesis Prize
  Awarded for the top undergraduate thesis in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering in my graduating class.
  
• AMAR: A Computational Model of Autosegmental Phonology . MIT AI Lab Tech Report #1450. Published MIT undergraduate thesis.
  
  This has been cited in the book Computational Phonology by Steven Bird. If you're interested in computational phonology, you can also visit Steven Bird's computational phonology site at Edinbugh University.
• National Research Service Award for Phonetics Training, 1995-1996.
  
• Recipient, Title VI Fellowship (twice) to study Quechua, for the academic years 1996-1997 and 1997-1998.
• Dissertation Year Fellowship, 1999-2000.
• Conference program committee for SIGPHON-5 conference, 2000.
• For other publications, see my publications page, to which I will eventually add some of my more recent stuff.
  

Personal Information and Extracurricular Activities

I am from Cary, North Carolina. I play the violin and sing (basso profundo),but not at the same time, and not much recently for the last few years. Actually, of late I've taken up the guitar. I play classical, flamenco, bluegrass, blues, and folk (more or less in that order).

I play with computers, PDAs, and toy trains in my not-so-copious spare time. I also enjoy tennis,badminton, and other such sports that do not require being able to catch or throw...

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