Professional Development and Industry Connections
We have a wide network of industry connections, as well as an extensive alumni network – both developed over decades. Each semester, we hold events that help students grow their network by meeting contacts in both groups. We also offer detailed and individualized career support programming and advising.
CL/NLP Industry Events
The Brandeis Computational Linguistics program has held CL/NLP industry-focused networking events every semester since 2013. These are informal events in which technical representatives working in NLP in industry and the non-profit sector have the opportunity to meet with students, discuss what their group does, hear about the students' backgrounds, and collect resumes from those looking for internships and full-time jobs.
Our recent events have also included panel discussions by area professionals on topics such as how their NLP approaches are changing in the current context of Large Language Models, and what types of knowledge and skills they feel are important to succeed in NLP and AI jobs, now and in the years to come.
Brandeis CL Master’s and CL-specialized CS PhD program alumni are often among the representatives who attend, and they are a great opportunity for our students to get to know our alumni community, in addition to other area professionals working in NLP. The events are a major resource for internship positions during school, full-time jobs after graduation, and the opportunity to make professional connections that can lead to additional later career opportunities.
Past and recent company and organization attendees have included representatives from:
- Large, varied tech corporations including Amazon, Adobe, Apple, Meta (previously Facebook), and Microsoft Research;
- Research groups in teaching hospitals and universities including Boston Children’s Hospital, Mass General Brigham (formerly Partners Heathcare), UMass Amherst Center for Data Science, and University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus;
- Companies working in specific sectors or application areas, ranging from healthcare, online sales, the financial sector, streaming apps, and government support, and including speech recognition, speech synthesis, and dialogue systems – Avoke, BBN Technologies, Babel Street (previously Basis Technologies), Burning Glass, CallMiner, Capital One, Charles River Analytics, Cobalt Speech and Language, Comcast, Dictionary.com, eBay, eviCore (previously QPID Health), Fidelity, ISI, Interactions, Linguamatics, Lionbridge, Mango Languages, Mass Mutual, MIT Lincoln Labs, MITRE, Nuance, OptumInsight, Philips Research, Pryon, Rakuten, Starbucks, RAMP, SAP, Semantic Machines, SIFT, Spotify, Talkler, Tibco, UFA, Verizon, VocalID, Walmart Advanced Systems and Robotics, and WHOOP – among many others!
If your company or organization is interested in attending a CL/NLP Industry Reception in the current semester or a future one, please email our CL industry outreach team and we will reach out to you with more information!
Career Support for Every Student
We hold professional development info sessions throughout the year for CL MS students, focusing on a wide range of practical skills and information. This includes everything from resume workshops, practice interviews, detailed information on navigating the job search and negotiating offers, and much more. Our students also take advantage of individual industry career advising with a dedicated career advisor.