CSE Undergrad News

Research Problem:
The high-level goal of this multi-site research project (led by SRI) is to improve machine translation performance on less formal genres such as web forum data, blogs, microblogs, chat, conversational speech, etc.  The focus of the UW team, led by Prof. Mari Ostendorf in EE, is on translating Mandarin Chinese to English, looking at methods for normalizing informalities and idioms as well as incorporating multi-sentence context for resolving ambiguities.  Challenges for an undergraduate researcher may include: analysis of impact of tokenization strategies on word alignment between languages, discovery of error patterns between gold reference English sentences and hypothesis English sentences translated from Chinese, and unsupervised learning of style/formality differences in forum text.

Desired Skills/Background:
1, Familiar with linux and shell scripting
2, Familiar with one or more of the following scripting languages: perl, python, and ruby
3, Experience in automatic text processing preferred
4, Ability to read simplified Chinese is a plus

For more information or to submit a resume, please contact Bin Zhang (binz@u.washington.edu). Bin will meet with all candidates, and he will select the most qualified to talk with Prof. Ostendorf.

Nominate people you think are worthy to take the reigns of ACM by going to: https://catalyst.uw.edu/webq/survey/timjv/162727

We plan to close the poll on April 9.

Anyone still looking for full time or internships, you should take note of the information below.

It’s that time of the year again, us ACM/W officers will be stepping down and we need to get new officers elected.

This is a great opportunity for a leadership role and departmental involvement!

Nominate people you think are worthy to take the reigns of ACM by going to: https://catalyst.uw.edu/webq/survey/timjv/162727

You can nominate as many people as you’d like.

Specific officer roles will be determined in the future.

We plan to close the poll by April 23, 2012.

There is a resume and cover letter writing workshop tonight from 7-8pm in MGH room 228. See below for more details and future events from CLUE

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Ben Birnbaum <birnbaum@cs.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:22 PM
Subject: [cs-ugrads] Call for participation: user study
To: cs-ugrads@cs.washington.edu

I’m running a user study on undergraduates with Android phones.  Please see the call for participation below to see if you might like to participate.

Thanks,
Ben Birnbaum

Greetings DUB,

I’m currently recruiting participants for a study about how college seniors monitor and manage the photos on their Facebook profiles. While this demographic probably does not include many of you, if you could share this with your undergraduate students, it would be much appreciated. The full study information can be found below or at http://bit.ly/uwfbstudy

Thanks for your help.

Best,

Behzod

(full study information)

—

Are you going to be graduating from college in 2012?
Do you have a Facebook account with photos of yourself on it?

If you are 18 or older and answered yes to either of these questions, we would like to talk to you!

We invite you to participate in a research study investigating the way students control what photos are associated with them on Facebook. Participants in this study will fill out a short questionnaire and participate in at least one audio-taped interview. The interview would take place at our lab at the University of Washington in Sieg Hall or at a mutually agreeable location that has Internet access. The interview will take no more than 1 hour. We may request 1 additional half-hour interview at a later date, which you may decline.

During the interview we will ask you to show us your Facebook account and talk about your photos. We will also ask for a printout or screen shot of 3 different photos of yourself. You may decline to show us your Facebook profile or to share a printout or screen shot. If you are geographically distant we will conduct an interview over the phone at a mutually convenient time. For phone interviews, we would call you so it would cost you nothing.

Participation in this study is strictly voluntary. There is no cost to you for participating. You will not be paid for your participation in this research. If you are interested in participating or have any questions about this study, please contact either Behzod Sirjani or Charlotte Lee. Contact information is below. We cannot ensure the confidentiality of any information sent by e-mail.

Behzod Sirjani
Email: behzod@uw.edu
Lab Phone: (206) 685-1514 (no voice mail)

Prof. Charlotte Lee
Email: cplee@uw.edu
Phone: (206) 543-0902

Computer Supported Collaboration (CSC) Laboratory
Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering
University of Washington