Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Currently: I am now at Google on the flights team. I'm working with their Lisp codebase. While it’s not directly related to Computational Linguistics, I was very glad to have refreshed my functional programming (Haskell in James Pustejovsky's class) before joining!

Favorite Experience in the MS Program: For one, I met my long-term girlfriend who I now live with! Other than that, there are a few things that stand out to me. First, my cohort and all the professors in the program were so awesome. It was just great learning with and from super nice people with similar interests. Relatedly, getting to have a close relationship with experts in subjects I was interested in meant getting exposure to a lot of topics I was drawn to that I didn't know had an entire field associated with them. Even outside of class, I was learning a lot. Finally, I got to learn about linguistics from a very scientific perspective that connected it to math and logic, which was something I had been curious about for a long time and was very satisfying to get a broad education on. And now I have the background to be able to study more on my own, which was something I struggled with before going through the program. Besides all that, I also loved the weekly donut hangouts with my cohort!

An Impactful Faculty Member: When I was there, all the faculty I worked with were amazing, so it's hard to pick just one. I loved learning more formal logic in James's class and connecting that to linguistics and learning about pragmatics with Sophia Malamud. I think I talked the most to Lotus Goldberg, who is so thoughtful and considerate and is always thinking about how she can help her students and as a result is one of those people you can learn a ton from even outside of class, all while having a fun conversation.

Currently: I am working at Boston Children's Hospital in the Computational Health Informatics Program in the Health NLP Lab. I work in natural language processing for clinical text. We use a full spectrum of NLP and CL methods, from physician curated ontologies to the latest techniques for working with LLMs. We research methods for extracting targeted information from different kinds of clinical text, e.g., timelines of chemotherapy treatment from cancer patient EHRs. I'm very lucky to be able to apply what I've learned and to continue developing my skills in contributing to the different stages of our projects, from developing annotation guidelines to writing software, conducting experiments, analyzing results, and packaging our software for deployment and inclusion in larger software systems.

Favorite Experience in the MS Program: I loved taking Introduction to Research with Professor Lotus Goldberg and pivoting from that into my master's thesis, supervised by Professor James Pustejovsky. That process of discovering a research topic and becoming at home with it was some of the most fun I've ever had.

An Impactful Faculty Member: Classes with Professor Pustejovsky were really eye opening in seeing the deep connections, both theoretical and applicative, between linguistics, computer science, and even philosophy. Each one of those classes was a setting where so many things that are interesting to me were brought together in a way where the rubber met the road.

Currently: I’m currently working as a Machine Learning Engineer at Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., where I help maintain the chatbot services on the Britannica website and contribute to the development of various AI applications.

Favorite Experience in the MS Program: It’s hard to pick just one because there were so many valuable experiences. First of all, I really enjoyed the core courses as well as the linguistics classes provided in the program. Beyond academics, I appreciated the mentorship and thoughtful support I received throughout the program—not only on the academic side but also as an international student navigating various challenges, including summer internships and career planning.

An Impactful Faculty Member: I especially remember the advising office hours with Sophia Malamud and Lotus Goldberg. During my final semester—when I had a baby—they helped me thoughtfully plan and complete the term so that I could graduate on time. Their guidance and encouragement were incredibly helpful. I’m also grateful for their support when I was struggling to find a summer internship; their advice helped me find a path forward.

Currently: As a Machine Learning Engineer at Google, I'm currently focused on developing AI agents for the Google Pixel phone. Our team works on features like "Circle to Search," which allows users to circle an image to find similar products, and the ability to extract event details from photos to create calendar reminders.

Favorite Experience in the MS Program: I was fortunate to be part of an incredibly supportive cohort. I recall many instances where we'd collaborate on homework in the Vertica lounge, with TAs readily available to assist us. I truly valued the collaborative environment and the opportunity to brainstorm ideas together.

An Impactful Faculty Member: I truly enjoyed my interactions with all the faculty members; their deep commitment to students significantly enhances the program. My academic advisors, Sophia Malamud and Lotus Goldberg, were incredibly supportive, offering invaluable academic guidance and financial assistance. Being in a cross-disciplinary program was fascinating due to the diverse backgrounds of students, ranging from computer science to linguistics and engineering. While this unique blend of skill sets could make finding the right lecture pace a challenge, both Sophia and Lotus did a great job at tailoring instruction to meet the needs of every student.

Currently: I'm starting a new position as an NLP Research Scientist at Charles River Analytics, where I'll work to develop techniques to adapt and restrain LLMs to lower frequency text domains in a data-efficient manner.

Favorite Experience in the MS Program: I loved working late with the cohort puzzling through the math behind a given model. Having as a resource a small cohort of people with diverse but aligned interests is energizing.

An Impactful Faculty Member: I enjoyed working with James Pustejovsky, who always encourages exploration of systematic and logical modes of language modeling to both augment and contextualize modern statistical models.