Doctoral Program "Semantic Processing"
The Department of Computational Linguistics at Heidelberg University and the Natural Language Processing Research Unit at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) offer a joint Doctoral Program on "Semantic Processing".
Mission
Our research centers around the Theory and Practice of Semantic Processing in Computational Linguistics and Related Disciplines.
The key to success in language technologies is to master scalable, robust and efficient semantic processing. Current methods use rich textual and computational linguistic resources for solving tasks in small domains. Developing efficient methods for accurate semantic processing in multiple languages, in general or changing application domains, however, is still a true challenge.
Our research focuses on developing new models of semantic processing using statistical and corpus-based methods. Scalability will be demonstrated by application to new languages and domains and to novel and challenging tasks. We will move from current techniques of approximate semantic processing to more powerful models for natural language understanding and generation.
Advancing automatic semantic processing to human performance levels requires links to related disciplines such as cognitive science, artificial intelligence, or visual processing. We therefore encourage interdisciplinary research.
