Experience and Skill Building: An Interview with Computer Science PhD Student Chester Palen-Michel, MS'18 in Computational Linguistics
February 4, 2025
Abigail Arnold | Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Chester Palen-Michel first came to Brandeis University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) in the fall of 2016 as a master’s student in Computational Linguistics. He became aware of Brandeis’s program when a friend’s sister, who had attended Brandeis as an undergraduate, mentioned it. “Once I met the faculty,” he said, “it was a clear choice.” Now, eight years later, Palen-Michel is immersed in the field; he earned the MS in Computational Linguistics in 2018 and is now pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at Brandeis.
Over his time as a student, Palen-Michel has developed skills and experience in his field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). “The MS was my first exposure to theoretical linguistics,” he said. “I had been a language person before and taught English and Spanish as second languages but hadn’t been exposed to theory in much detail.” Doing his PhD in the same department “felt like a natural continuation.” He has also continued working with his mentor, Constantine Lignos, whom he first met in 2017 while doing an internship and with whom he worked between his time in the MS and PhD programs. When Lignos joined Brandeis as a faculty member, Palen-Michel returned as a PhD student and joined his lab. In Lignos’s lab, Palen-Michel researches languages with fewer NLP resources, such as Lao and Zulu, and how to make NLP work better for them.
In addition to building skills and connections, Palen-Michel has had the opportunity to gain opportunities applying his skills outside of the academy. He had an internship at BBN Technologies in Cambridge during the summer between his two years in the MS program, working on named entity linking in low-resourced languages. After graduating with the MS, he worked in a research role at the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California for two years. “I had always been interested in research and got more interested during the MS,” he said, “but I wanted work experience before pursuing a PhD.” Returning to Brandeis for his PhD allowed him to move on to the research portion of his degree more quickly.
Palen-Michel advised prospective students in the field to be open to exploring and learning. “If you don’t know much about coding, try to start,” he said. “There are lots of basic tutorials that can give you an idea about whether you enjoy it.” He also advised connecting with others who are already studying in the field. “Reach out to current students: it’s a really good way to get insight into what the program’s like and how the advisors work with their students,” he said. As a student himself, Palen-Michel has expanded his knowledge and research skills, combining hands-on experience with theory to learn more about his field.