Department: Computer Science and Engineering
Degree Program: Natural Language Processing MS
Hometown: San Jose, CA
Undergraduate Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Graduate Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz

Kaleen Shrestha is a member of the inaugural class of Baskin Engineering’s new M.S. in Natural Language Processing (NLP) program. She is also an undergraduate alumna of UC Santa Cruz, where she majored in computer science.

What made you decide to attend UCSC’s NLP Program?

I attended UCSC as an undergraduate and received my bachelor’s in computer science. I was fascinated by AI and wanted to explore the topics in that field some more, and so I decided to apply to graduate school. I was primarily interested in the ethical use of AI: understanding its implications and using it consciously.

When I applied to UCSC, I actually applied to the computer science and engineering MS program. Professor Marilyn Walker reached out to me through email because I had expressed interest in NLP in my application and talked to me about the NLP program. I got interested because the program was new and I thought it would be flexible and practical, and it showed a lot of room for growth.

Tell us more about your interest in NLP and how it has changed since you started the program.

I was curious about what interesting problems exist in NLP when joining the program. I had read a couple of interesting articles about NLP and had taken an introductory undergraduate course; in particular, an article that helped spark my interest in NLP was about gender bias in data and how it was amplified by the language model that was trained on that data. At that time I was taking Professor Lise Getoor’s new Ethics and Algorithms class and got interested in ethics in AI. I thought to myself, wow, things like this pop up in NLP and I want to work on this.

Now that I am a part of the program, I would say the courses really opened my eyes to the challenges in dealing with natural language. For example, in a linguistics class, we were learning about pragmatics and semantics which helped me realize that natural language is inherently biased on the individual and corpus level. Individually, there can be various styles for communicating a topic. On the corpus level, there are things like reporting bias, where the data available are only generated by certain types of people, for example. So this leads to problems in machine learning where models are dependent on patterns found in the data. So, I’m really glad to have found such an interesting subfield of AI where I can apply my interests in ethical data science.

What do you like about UCSC and the NLP Program?

Something that really stands out to me is my peers and fellow classmates. They have a great attitude towards learning. Everyone is very down to earth and humble when it comes to figuring out a challenging problem. This learning atmosphere is something that I didn’t see during my time in high school, and it was something that I really enjoyed during my time as an undergraduate at UCSC.

The question-asking and humble learning attitude was something that was really important for my learning and so that helped me choose UCSC for graduate school. In the NLP program, the professors are all very eager to help and open to answering questions. Since this is a new program, there are new situations that we have to adapt to and learn from, which I feel prepares us well for future endeavors in research and industry.

What would you like to do after you complete your NLP degree?

I want to ground myself in a practical application, that is something I really want to strive for and focus on. This program is really practical and I want to find a problem in industry to work on. I want to find a job and if I find an interesting problem, I would work on it in a PhD program or research.

What are some hobbies or fun facts about yourself?

I like gardening, and I recently propagated my avocado plant out of a seed. It took a whopping 6 months to get it to sprout, but now it is more than a foot tall! I also love hiking. At the UCSC campus, just walking to class is a hike.

Fun fact: my first name is made up completely, the spelling, everything! However, I found out that my name is the name of a well-established suburb in Australia. My name apparently also means water in an indigenous Australian language.

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaleen-shrestha

Degree Program: Natural Language Processing M.S.
Undergraduate Institution: Brigham Young University, Utah Valley University
Department: Computer Science and Engineering
Hometown: Salt Lake City, Utah

Adam Fidler is a member of the inaugural class of Baskin Engineering’s new M.S. in Natural Language Processing (NLP). He spoke with us about what he likes most about the program so far and his aspirations for a career in NLP.

How did you discover your interest in Natural Language Processing?

I grew up with computers, so choosing to go in that direction was pretty easy. But after spending two years in Japan I realized I love languages too and wanted to see if there was an overlap between linguistics and computer science. After doing some research I found natural language processing (NLP) and realized it was something I wanted to do.

Why did you choose UCSC?

One of my NLP professors heard about the program from a linguistics mailing list. I applied on a whim, and I was happy to get in!

My undergrad prepared me pretty well for the things we’re talking about. I managed to essentially combine linguistics, computer science and applied mathematics into one major and it seems like it was good preparation for what I’m studying now.

What do you think of the program?

So far I like it. I think there will be plenty of networking opportunities, which is great because so many of our faculty members are in the industry right now.

My favorite class so far is machine learning. As an applied math student, I did a lot of machine learning. So the class means taking those things I learned about and applying them to linguistics.

I’m really looking forward to doing projects for our classes.

What are your plans after you graduate?

I love digital assistants like Siri and Alexa. Being able to work on something like that would be really neat. Everyone is using them… so I’d love to make them even better. I see them becoming much better at more generalized tasks. This is kind of a silly example, but I think of J.A.R.V.I.S. from The Avengers (Iron Man’s artificial intelligence) as the ideal. It would be wonderful to have something that generalized. We’re still a ways off from something so conversational and human-like. A lot of progress has been made and I’m happy to be pushing the limits of what we can do.

As for a career, academia has always intrigued me. I was a research assistant at BYU. It was a ton of fun and I love teaching, but I also really like the idea of going into industry and working for a startup, big tech company, or really anywhere that I could use the skills I pick up here because NLP is something I love.

What are some hobbies or fun facts about yourself?

I like hanging out with people, so of course these lockdowns have been driving me nuts. I hesitate to call math a hobby, but I think of it as one of my hobbies.

I took a course in Chaos Theory from the professor I worked for. You could say it’s the idea of studying how small perturbations affect something in the end, like the weather. It’s a chaotic, dynamical system we can model, but if you change the input ever so slightly, it can cause totally different results.

I spend more hours than is probably productive watching Youtube videos of math and math lectures.

Degree Program: Natural Language Processing M.S.
Undergraduate Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Department: Computer Science and Engineering
Hometown: Atwater, California

Angela Ramirez is a member of the inaugural class of Baskin Engineering’s new M.S. in Natural Language Processing (NLP). She is also an undergraduate alumna of UC Santa Cruz, where she majored in cognitive science with an emphasis in artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction and a minor in computer science.

Why did you choose to study Natural Language Processing?

My journey toward Natural Language Processing (NLP) has been long. I can’t say I’m one of those people who always knew she wanted to do NLP. It was about two years ago that I learned about it… I was working as a research assistant on a project that looked at online communities. We explored the dynamics between owners and members. So that became my introduction to machine learning and natural language processing. I thought it was super interesting that we were able to resolve that level of detail from text and graphical structures alone.

I ended up doing my thesis looking at mental wellbeing applications. I did a lot with sentiment analysis using the work of Pennebaker, who found that people suffering from depression often use “I” statements, for example. I just found it really interesting. Language really is what connects us as humans. It’s a beautiful thing.

It’s also a really rich field to study. There are so many gaps. People speak in such different ways and I think there’s real complexity and beauty in it. So that’s how I got into NLP.

What do you think of the program so far?

I honestly think it’s great! We’re getting real experts who work in the industry to show us how they use the technology and what they do with it. Getting that perspective is really cool. I feel like it’s a good mix of things. We’re getting to learn how the industry actually uses NLP and the background of these methods, what the shortcomings and benefits are.

We’ve had three seminar speakers so far. It’s really inspiring to hear how they approach NLP, and what their thinking is behind things. It makes me think of things I might be able to do with the technology.

What would you like to do when you graduate?

I’ve been looking into different career paths like data science, data engineering, or finding a niche in NLP. One area of interest is understanding text sentiment. It seems like a very big field. Before coming to the NLP program I worked with an ecommerce company. I saw firsthand how sentiment analysis and marketing can go together.

I really like the idea of creating empathetic systems that can detect emotion and provide appropriate responses. We’ve also been hearing a lot about bias in algorithms and ways of preventing it from creeping in. So I’ve been thinking a lot about the kinds of algorithms and methods they found bias in and how to prevent it. It’s been inspiring me to think about coreference resolution, and the different types of machine learning techniques to prevent these issues from occurring.

Why else did you choose to come to UC Santa Cruz?

It’s close to Silicon Valley, so that was a huge draw for me. The seminar courses are great too because it allows us to create connections with these people. When I saw that I was really intrigued. I’d also heard about the Amazon Alexa prize and other research going on at Santa Cruz. Also, I knew some of the teachers who’d be working with us.

Tell us some fun facts about yourself!

I like doing my makeup, yoga, and weight-lifting. I’ve recently taken up knitting too. That’s been fun. I’m a big hiker (as most people at UC Santa Cruz are). During quarantine I’ve also been venturing into other realms, learning about new languages and things like astrology.

I’m technically a first-generation woman STEM graduate! I’m the first in my family to get a master’s degree, so it’s great to be here!

Degree Program: Natural Language Processing M.S.
Undergraduate Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Department: Computer Science and Engineering
Hometown: Chengdu, China

Cecilia Li is a Baskin Engineering undergraduate alumna who is currently enrolled in UC Santa Cruz’s new M.S. program in natural language processing. She spoke with us about what she loves about computer science and her plans for the future.

Why did you choose the NLP MS program?

I graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a B.S. in computer science and a minor in math. I absolutely loved the program. After graduating I applied for the computer science program and was accepted into their masters program and then –funny story– I received an email about the natural language processing program, which I’d never heard of. I contacted the director, Professor Walker, for details.

After looking over the course schedules I saw all kinds of machine learning courses, which is what I wanted to study, and switched to that program.

What interests you about Natural Language Processing?

I use Amazon Alexa and can tell it’s the way the world is heading.

I love data collection. I’m a bit of a nerd and hoarding data has always been a hobby of mine. I’ll scrape web sites for information to parse. For example, I play Animal Crossing, and to figure out which fish and bugs I needed to catch and when, I scraped a few wikis for the information and then cross-referenced them with my inventory and went back in time to catch the ones I needed. So that’s the kind of stuff I do for fun!

I’d love to do something combining language and data.

What do you think of the program so far?

I was a little afraid that I’d find the courses challenging because I didn’t come in with a strong machine learning background, but it’s been going really well. Of course I’m putting in a lot of time, and there have been a couple of days when I’ve only had time to eat a single meal, but I’m getting it done!

We’ve been playing around with different NLP models in our class. My favorite thing was combining multiple models and running them simultaneously. I’m still a beginner when it comes to NLP, but that was really compelling to me. It makes me really happy to be able to use so much of the math I learned.

It’s really nice to have professors who work in industry. At least half of our professors work in the field. It’s incredible hearing about how big companies are starting to use NLP.

What are your plans for after graduation?

I’m definitely drawn to a life in academia over industry. I’d love to be able to learn throughout my entire career. Professor Flanigan’s work seems incredibly interesting, I’d love to join his lab at some point. So I guess the next step would be a Ph.D. program if anyone will have me!

Tell us about yourself.

I love traveling. Before college I was lucky enough to travel all over the world. I really enjoyed visiting the Maldives, Singapore, Japan, Bali in Indonesia. The U.S. was always where I wanted to go for college, though. I wanted to be at the cutting edge of technology and knew California was the place to be.

These days when I’m not doing my school work or exploring new restaurants in San Jose or scraping data, I play a lot of Nintendo Switch, especially “Zelda: Breath of the Wild.”

Degree Program: Natural Language Processing M.S.
Graduate Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Department: Computer Science and Engineering
Hometown: Sunnyvale, CA

How did you choose this program?

I went to UCSC for my undergraduate degree before starting the NLP program. I was a computer science and computational mathematics major, and I graduated this year. I had an idea that I wanted to do grad school afterwards, and one day I got an email about the program. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know what NLP stood for at the time!

I was intrigued by the description and started looking into what it was and why there was a separate program for it, and reached out to the program director, Professor Marilyn Walker.

I went into the NLP program fairly blind. I hadn’t taken any courses as an undergraduate, but the math and computer science I took at UC Santa Cruz has really helped me prepare for the program. I think of it as a wide enough platform to give me the footing I need for this program. I’m about a month in so far, and it’s super fun.

How so?

We’ve just begun so we’ve mostly been doing introductions and review; but there have been a couple of seminars which have been fantastic. It’s amazing hearing from people who are working on NLP now — for example the professor teaching my five o’clock class is teaching at five because he’s working with the technology during the rest of the day. I feel lucky to have these people teaching us.

It’s an approachable subject. It’s easy to get started with NLP, and there are tons of resources available. I also like that this is such a small program, so all 25 of us are taking the same classes together and even though we’re on Zoom 100% of the time, it feels like we’re all connected, so I’m getting to know people.

I’ve really appreciated the emphasis the school has had on keeping our cameras on during class and making sure we all speak up. It helps maintain a sense of community.

Tell me more about why you like NLP.

Natural language processing is still very new to me. It’s been fascinating. I love learning about linguistics and languages and how languages create meaning and the different properties languages have. The application of the technology has also been really cool. We’re already working on projects that are producing results.

I’ll give you an example: The first project we made was a label classifier. It takes an utterance (something someone would say) and breaks it down. For example if you asked it, “Who plays Luke in Star Wars: A New Hope?” it would break the question down into categories (such as movie.starring.actor). We have a database of about 3,000 utterances and a test that we don’t have the relations for and that we have to predict the correct answer. We’re all trying to create the most accurate predictions… It’s incredible what you can do with this technology. I’d love to build things like this for a living.

What are some fun facts about yourself?

I’m an avid cyclist. I was on the cycling team at UCSC. In my NLP introduction, my fun fact was that I biked from Santa Cruz to San Francisco and back and I just did that again. It took all day. It was 16 hours or something.

I also work part-time as a bicycle mechanic. I’m obsessed with bikes. I’ve thought about combining NLP and biking into some kind of app, but so far I haven’t been able to think of anything. Bike technology tends to run about ten years behind the rest of the world. I’ve tried using a voice assistant while I ride and it was one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever done. It’s like 2001: A Space Odyssey when the computer betrays everyone!

Degree Program: Natural Language Processing M.S.
Graduate Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate Institution: Florida State University
Department: Computer Science and Engineering
Hometown: Tallahassee, Florida

Nilay Patel is a member of the inaugural class of UC Santa Cruz’s new Master’s program in Natural Language Processing. During COVID, he has been taking courses remotely from his hometown in Florida. He talked with us about what he likes about NLP, and what he is hoping to do when he graduates.

What made you decide to attend UCSC’s NLP Program?

I’m really interested in the more mathy side of computer science and theory in general. Natural Language Processing (NLP) was kind of an extension of that. I’m not an expert at computer science, math, or linguistics, but they fascinate me, and NLP is kind of at the intersection of them all.

My undergrad thesis was on a problem related to recommender systems. The project took a whole bunch of student evaluation data and we wanted to use it to predict which professors would match up well with which courses. We used a lot of machine learning but if we had the time we would have definitely incorporated NLP to crunch the text, so it helped me realize the potential of it.

When I was applying, I looked for programs with an NLP focus, mostly in CS. I figured it’s a new enough field that there are cool things for students and researchers to get involved with. A degree in NLP will help me focus on what I want to do.

What do you think of the program so far?

No complaints! The professors clearly know their stuff. The first week and a half was largely review. After we got that out of the way, we started working on projects and things really ramped up. I’m really enjoying the machine learning courses. Our first homework was a mini competition. We had about 3,000 data points and we were given broken down queries like “Who plays Luke in Star Wars?” translated to phrases like movies.starwars.starringroles and had to predict what the original question was.

I’m taking the course from Florida, which is a change of pace because I’ve never had classes go so late. One begins at 8:20pm, and normally my brain is doing something that doesn’t require quite so much focus by then. I’m adjusting.

What would you like to do after you complete your NLP degree?

After I get the degree, my goal is to get another, ideally a Ph.D. in the field, but if by some miracle I get a really nice job doing research at a company things might change.

Before the degree started I was really interested in machine translation but I’ve been exposed to so many new things in the past few weeks I don’t quite know what I want to focus on. As an example I’ve been really interested in language modeling, which is exactly what it sounds like: say if you have a sentence and want to build a model that will predict the next word in a sequence.

Tell us some fun facts about yourself.

My biggest hobby is playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and more recently my own game based on the Star Wars universe. I’m DMing, which means I’m leading my friends on a series of quests. The game is about the criminals and intergalactic smugglers living in the StarWars universe. It’s really narrative-based, although of course there’s combat as well. I play the environment and the non-player characters. We call it Space Pirates.

I also enjoy reading. I’ve been reading the Stormlight Archive, which is a monster of a book. There’s a new one coming out in a couple of weeks, so I’ve been rereading the series.