Natural language research announcements

[Ming-Wei Chang <mchang21 AT uiuc.edu>]

Dear faculty and students, 

A postdoc of our department, Tsvi Achler, will give a talk
(details below) for the AIIS seminar at 4:00 pm, Apr 16th (this
Thursday). The room number is 3405. Hope to see you there!

Best,

Ming-Wei

Title:
Making Sense of Simultaneous Patterns.

Abstract:

The ability to look beyond what is learned and apply the learned
information to new scenarios often distinguishes animals from computer
artifacts.  An important component of this ability is recognizing
novel combinations of previously learned patterns, which typically
form scenes.  While animals can quickly evaluate scenes, artificial
methods require segmenting and analyzing patterns one by one.
Segmentation, however, is not trivial or often even possible.  Thus
artificial methods show impoverished performance disambiguating
patterns composed of simultaneous components such as scenes, cocktail
party conversations, and odorants in a mixture.  A new type of
multiclass classifier motivated by neuroscience is presented that
better differentiates simultaneous patterns.  It utilizes a gain
control mechanism where each piece of information is evaluated by its
contribution to the network.  Based on evaluation of contribution, the
value of information is re-adjusted until the network determines its
solutions.  It allows more efficient processing of novel combinations
of previously learned patterns and can benefit AI applications where
simultaneous processes may occur at the same time.

Bio:
Tsvi Achler studies recognition processing applications from a 
multidisciplinary
perspective leaving no stone unturned.  He received bachelor degrees from UC
Berkeley in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science.  His advanced
degrees are from
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Neuroscience, Medicine,
and is currently a postdoc in Computer Science.   Throughout his
career he refined his views and models relating to understanding of
biological computation. This approach puts him in a unique position to
design computational artifacts and integrating biological constraints.