The Johns Hopkins University has been awarded a
long-term multimillion-dollar contract
to establish and operate a Human Language Technology
Center of Excellence near the
Homewood campus. The center's research will focus on
advanced technology for automatically
analyzing a wide range of speech, text and document image
data in multiple languages.
The Human Language Technology Center of Excellence is
the result of a competitive
solicitation from the U.S. Department of Defense. The
contract, signed earlier this year,
envisions a minimum of $48.4 million in funding through
2015.
The Human Language Technology Center of Excellence
will be staffed by engineers,
mathematicians, computer scientists, linguists, cognitive
experts and other leading
researchers. These will include researchers from the
university's
Whiting School of
Engineering and
Applied Physics Laboratory, along with others from
Johns Hopkins' partner
institutions, the University of Maryland in College Park
and BBN Technologies, based in
Cambridge, Mass. Additional experts from other
universities also will assist the center.
Johns Hopkins has hired two outstanding outsiders to
lead the new center: Gary W.
Strong as executive director and James K. Baker as
director of research. The center reports
to Johns Hopkins' vice provost for research, Theodore O.
Poehler.
According to Strong, "The government is facing
massive information overload. We need a
better way to sort, filter, interpret and call attention
to important material that's buried
within the enormous amount of multilingual data being
produced every day in other nations.
The government does not have nearly enough people with the
multiple language skills needed to
review this material. We need to develop technology to
help."
The center's researchers will work to create and
refine such technology over the coming
decade. Previous attempts to make major strides in this
field have been hampered, Strong
said, by a narrow focus and short-term funding. Federal
officials believe the new center's
extended funding and technology-focused research will
produce better results.
As executive director, Strong will draw on his
extensive background in academia, private
industry and government posts, including a lengthy stint
as a program manager and high-level
official at the National Science Foundation, focusing on
language technology projects.
Poehler says that the Center of Excellence builds
upon the pool of prominent
researchers already working at the
Center for Language and
Speech Processing at Johns
Hopkins and at the University of Maryland's Institute for
Advanced Computer Studies. He
believes the center will boost the state's reputation as a
thriving high-tech region and will help
both universities attract additional respected researchers
and grants.
"This will be the nation's premier language
technology center, and it's likely to stimulate
further expansion both at Johns Hopkins and at the
University of Maryland in this important
research field," Poehler said. "When the Space Telescope
Science Institute opened on our
campus, it attracted a lot of top scientists and
strengthened our physics and astronomy
program. In the same way, the language technology center
has the potential to enhance our
already strong team in this field."
Melvin Bernstein, the University of Maryland's vice
president for research, said,
"There's a formidable axis of language expertise that runs
through Maryland from
Washington, D.C., to Baltimore. Because of this
concentration of expertise, this is a natural
spot for a collaborative, interdisciplinary center in this
field."
The director of research, Jim Baker, was the founder,
chief executive officer and
chairman of Dragon Systems, which in 1997 introduced
Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the first
general purpose automatic dictation system. Baker sold his
interest in the company in 2000
and became a Distinguished Career Professor at Carnegie
Mellon University before moving to
Johns Hopkins.
Together with the faculties at Johns Hopkins and the
University of Maryland, the
center will help train the next generation of language
technology scientists by providing
research opportunities, graduate fellowships and doctoral
degree programs. The center will
invite outside researchers to workshops to share insights
and test new ideas.
"In addition to fostering lively research
collaborations, this center will provide
important new training opportunities for students who want
to learn from and build upon the
work of some of the top scientists in the field of human
language technology," said William R.
Brody, president of Johns Hopkins.
C.D. Mote Jr., president of the University of
Maryland, said, "The interface between
language and technology is simply too complex for a narrow
perspective. Teams of experts are
needed all around. We will draw on our excellent faculty
and scholars in linguistics, information
science, neurobiology, computer science and software
design."
Although the center will be addressing government
needs, software developed by the
center could have many commercial applications.
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