Nigel Collier
Professor of Natural Language Processing, University of Cambridge
I have been working in NLP and AI for over 25 years. Before joining the University of Cambridge on an EPSRC Experienced Researcher Fellowship (2015-2020) I spent the early part of my career in Japan (1996-2012). I was a Toshiba Fellow, a postdoc at Tokyo University with Junichi Tsujii and Associate Professor at the newly formed National Institute of Informatics where I led the NLP lab for 12 years before returning to the UK on a Marie Curie Research Fellowship. As an undergraduate I studied for a BSc. in Computer Science at the University of Leeds (1992). I received an MSc in Machine Translation (1994) and a PhD in Computational Linguistics (1996) from the University of Manchester (UMIST) for my research on English-Japanese Lexical Transfer using a Hopfield Neural Network.
My work focuses on natural language processing and machine learning. My research interests are broadly in creating better models for natural language understanding (see recent publications on Google Scholar). Recent areas of focus include LLM evaluations, understanding uncertainty, reasoning and issues around synthetic personalities. I also have a long running interest in NLP applications particularly in biomedicine and epidemiology that involve state of the art models and illustrate interesting challenges.
Prospective PhD students: I am always interested to supervise new NLP projects on the PhD in Computation, Cognition and Language. Before contacting me please make sure that you meet the minimum requirements and take time to check out my publications. In your email please send a CV with a brief statement of research interests. Please note the application deadline and documents you need to submit with your application. Note for 2025 applicants: my team is now very full so I am anticipating only taking one student on next year.
Enquiries for postdoctoral opportunities are welcome. When needed I can help explore funding sources for fellowships from UK, EU and other agencies.
Over the years many people have contributed to the research and publications in my lab. Here's a list of current students, postdocs and alumni.
Current projects
2020.2 to 2024.12 ESRC EPI-AI: Automated Understanding and Alerting of Disease Outbreaks from Global News Media (with Professor David Buckeridge and Dr Nick King, McGill University). The EPI-AI project aims to achieve a step change in automated global epidemic alerting using news media monitoring. Teams at McGill and Cambridge universities, in collaboration with national and international public health agencies, are adopting an interdisciplinary approach that combines natural language processing, epidemiology, biomedical informatics and bioethics to address this complex task.
Nigel Collier, Professor of Natural Language Processing
The Language Technology Lab, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge, 9 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DB, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1223-760373
Email: nhc30 [AT] cam dot ac dot uk
Office: Room TR-23, English Faculty Building
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-7230-4164
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