Research
Research
My research focuses on Natural Language Processing (NLP), and in particular how ambiguous text is interpreted. Since joining the Open University, I have investigated how to build computational models that predict when different people will disagree on the interpretation of ambiguous text. I have looked at both the theoretical foundations of the phenomenon, and its potential impact in the area of requirements engineering, when requirements documents written in natural language could be misinterpreted by software developers.
I also have a research interest in the problem of how to recognise semantic similarity between texts. My ongoing research in this area applies inductive logic programming to learn systems for automatically grading students' written work.
The methods underlying these tasks are generalisable beyond NLP, and I have also co-supervised several doctoral projects on using machine learning techniques to model music.
PhD students
One of the greatest privileges of working in higher education is the opportunity to supervise PhD students, and to be part of their work in advancing knowledge of computing.
Current students
Andrea Bolzoni
Shirin Lade
Former students
Martino Mensio: Persuasion across the Political Spectrum: Quantifying Differences in Parallel News Reports
Nitu Bharati: Classifying Stance in News Articles: Use of Attribution Relations and Source Expertise
Suraj Pandey: Modelling Alignment and Key Information for Automatic Grading
Germán Ruiz: Tension-driven Automatic Music Generation
Jacopo Amidei: Evaluating the Evaluators: Subjective Bias and Consistency in Human Evaluation of Natural Language Generation
Simon Cutajar: Automatic Generation of Dynamic Musical Transitions in Computer Games
Trung Huynh: Text Classification with Deep Neural Networks
Anthony Prechtl: Adaptive Music Generation for Computer Games
Tom Collins: Improved Methods for Pattern Discovery in Music, with Applications in Automated Stylistic Composition
Francis Chantree: Identifying Nocuous Ambiguity in Natural Language Requirements