26.1741, Summer Schools: Natural Language Generation, Summarisation, and Dialogue Systems / Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

Wed Apr 1 17:24:58 UTC 2015

LINGUIST List: Vol-26-1741. Wed Apr 01 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.1741, Summer Schools: Natural Language Generation, Summarisation, and Dialogue Systems / Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

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Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2015 13:22:23
From: Roman Kutlak [r.kutlak at abdn.ac.uk]
Subject: Natural Language Generation, Summarisation, and Dialogue Systems / Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

 Natural Language Generation, Summarisation, and Dialogue Systems / Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

Host Institution: University of Aberdeen
Coordinating Institution:   
Website: http://nlgsummer.github.io

Dates: 20-Jul-2015 - 24-Jul-2015
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom

Focus: The objective of this summer school is to introduce participants to the concepts and research questions in natural language generation (NLG), summarisation, and dialogue systems. Although these three areas produce natural language, their distinct communities seldom interact because each community relies on different methods and because the inputs to each kind of system are different. There is, however, considerable overlap in the kinds of problems that need to be considered, from selecting the right content to evaluating the systems. We believe that focusing on the similarities of the different areas can stimulate "cross-pollination" of research. For example, most summarisation techniques could benefit from deeper semantic processing as performed in dialogue systems. Similarly, many NLG systems could benefit from techniques used by dialogue systems to substantially improve the generated output.

Minimum Education Level: No Minimum

Special Qualifications:
The summer school will be primarily aimed at PhD students and early career researchers, but more experienced researchers will be admitted. There are no formal requirements. Participants will be introduced to the respective fields assuming no prior knowledge. However, the covered topics rely on concepts such as linguistics, statistics, machine learning, etc. We expect the courses to be of similar difficulty to a fourth year undergraduate course.

Description:
Course Summary:

1. Introduction to NLG: Ehud Reiter (University of Aberdeen, ARRIA NLG)

2. NLG in detail
2.1. Content Determination: Chris Mellish (University of Aberdeen)
2.2. Micro-planning:Albert Gatt (University of Malta)
2.3. Surface Realisation:Albert Gatt (University of Malta)

3. Introduction to Summarisation:Advaith Siddharthan (University of Aberdeen)

4. Introduction to Dialogue Systems: Paul Piwek (Open University)

5. Learning to Generate: Concept-to-Text Generation Using Machine Learning Yannis Konstas (University of Edinburgh)

6. Evaluation: Ehud Reiter (University of Aberdeen, ARRIA NLG)

7. Readability: Thomas François (Université catholique de Louvain)

8. Cognitive Modelling: the case of reference Kees van Deemter (University of Aberdeen)

9. The New Science of Information Delivery: Robert Dale (ARRIA NLG)

10. Open Lab: Yaji Sripada (University of Aberdeen, ARRIA NLG)

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics

Subject Languages: English

Tuition: 250 GBP

Tuition Explanation: 
- 200 GBP for students and 250 GBP for others until the 15th of May
- 250 GBP for students and 300 GBP for others thereafter

Tuition fees cover classes, lunches and coffee and biscuits only. 

Participants will have to pay for their accommodation, travel and other expenses separately.

Registration: 15-Mar-2015 to 16-Jul-2015

Contact Person: Roman Kutlak
                Email: nlg.summer at abdn.ac.uk

Apply on the web: http://nlgsummer.github.io

Registration Instructions:
Click on the "Registration" link on the website. That will take you to a university online store where you will have to create an account. You can then select the type of admission (student/other) and follow the instructions. Students will be required to provide a student ID and the name of the institution.

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