Ph.D. Program in Language and Information Technologies

Please see the LTI student handbook for the most thorough, up-to-date set of rules concerning this program. Also, there are slides featuring curriculum requirements and advice for students.

Introduction

The School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University is pleased to announce the creation of a Ph.D. program in Language and Information Technologies. The new program is designed to build on CMU's strengths in computational linguistics, machine translation, information management, and speech understanding by offering a program focusing on these particular areas. These fields have shown considerable growth in recent years and are poised for further breakthroughs, which take advantage of emerging technological infrastructures such as the World-Wide Web, mobile computing, and multimedia interfaces. Please note that:

These areas involve active scientific inquiry, as well as rapid paths towards applications (CMU's development of LYCOS is just one example). Moreover, there is considerable synergy among the four areas in terms of objective, methods, and the need to combine functionalities; a Ph.D. program encompassing all four areas provides an integrated and coherent course of study.

The Language and Information Technologies Ph.D. is broader in scope than the Computational Linguistics (CL) Ph.D. previously offered in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, but it incorporates a considerable number of the course topics covered in that program; tenured CL faculty will actively participate in the our program.

Students presenting their work at the 2008 Student Research Symposium

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Program Requirements

The Ph.D. in Language and Information Technologies consists of the following components:

Course Requirements

The course requirement consists of eight (8) courses from the list of LTI core courses. Students should select specific courses in consultation with their advisor, keeping in mind that not all courses are offered each year. (Note: each 6-unit lab course counts as one half of a course towards the total eight required.)

Upon completion of the eight required courses, students may choose to take additional courses as electives. Students may select these courses from the LTI list, or from those offered in the Computer Science Department or other CMU or Pitt departments. Students interested in speech should consider speech-oriented electives; other areas of interest include Linguistics, Statistics, and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

When selecting the eight required courses and electives, at least one course must be selected from each focus area listed here.

All students must also enroll (for a minimum of two sections) in the Language Engineering laboratory, which includes hands-on work in four different laboratory modules (Speech, Machine Translation, Information Retrieval, and Natural Language Analysis). The lab modules are self paced, with TA and faculty guidance (As mentioned above, each lab counts as one half of a course towards the total eight required.)

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Model Curriculum

The following gives a possible Ph.D. curriculum for a student specializing in Machine Translation. Specializations in Speech, Information Retrieval, and Multimedia Systems will be similar in structure, with appropriate course substitutions.

Proficiencies

The following skills must be demonstrated in the course of graduate study, with flexibility in the form and timing of their demonstration:

Writing

Satisfied via a conference paper or article that has passed peer review, or via a longer internal paper or report reviewed by several faculty. The topic of the paper may be the student's research results, a comprehensive survey of a research area, a linguistic analysis paper, or any other pertinent topic.

Presentation

Satisfied via a public presentation of reasonable quality, such as an external conference presentation or an internal seminar presentation reviewed by several faculty.

Programming

Normally the programming requirement will be satisfied in the course of a student's research and/or project work, but it could also be satisfied via explicit apprenticeship if desired.

Teaching

Satisfied by assisting in the teaching of a class (i.e. being a TA for a semester) including the planning of a portion of the syllabus and exercises, as well as delivery of some lectures under faculty supervision.

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Research and Ph.D. Thesis

It is expected that all Ph.D. students engage in active research from their first semester. Moreover, advisor selection should occur within 1-2 months of entering the Ph.D. program, with the option to change at a later time. Roughly half of a student's time should be allocated to research and lab work, and half to courses until these are completed.

The dissertation proposal, normally presented at the end of the third year, should be a document specifying:

A dissertation committee consisting of the advisor, at least two other CMU faculty in language technologies, and at least one external member should be approved prior to the proposal. Note: University rules require that the time and place of the proposal presentation be publically announced at least one week prior to the presentation. This should be coordinated with the Chair of the Graduate Programs.

The dissertation itself, normally completed during the fifth year, should include a detailed description of all the work done, including a clear evaluation and discussion of final scientific contributions. There are no fixed style or document length guidelines or requirements. The dissertation defense is a public presentation and defense of the dissertation results. Note: University rules again require that the time and place of the dissertation defense be publically announced at least one week prior to the defense. This should also be coordinated with the Chair of the Graduate Programs.

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Financial Support

Whereas all Ph.D. students will receive some form of financial support, the exact form of that support may vary. Possible forms of support include external fellowships, research assistantships (RAs), and teaching assistantships (TAs). RAs require a measure of project work, and TAs require teaching each semester.