Who does what to whom - Syntactic parsing in man and machine

This industrial collaboration project with Google Research London bridges between artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, computational and cognitive neuroscience.

Language processing is one of the most complex tasks facing the human brain in everyday life. In order to understand ‘who does what to whom’, a biological or artificial agent needs to assign a syntactic structure to each sentence – a process coined ‘syntactic parsing’.

Artificial intelligence and computational linguistics has developed a range of machine learning algorithms (e.g. dependency parsing) that are trained on large annotated linguistic corpora to assign grammatical classes and syntactic structures automatically to novel natural sentences. Yet, while these algorithms are relatively efficient, they do not obtain the accuracy of human readers.

This interdisciplinary project will combine expertise from human neuroscience (University of Birmingham) and computational linguistics (Google Research London) to determine the neural mechanisms underlying sentence comprehension in the human brain and advance parsing algorithms in machines. To study natural language processing and the underlying neural mechanisms in humans, we will measure eye movements, behavioural (psychophysics) and electrophysiological responses (EEG/fMRI) in participants reading natural sentences from syntactically annotated corpora. We will employ advanced machine learning algorithms to characterize the computational operations and neural mechanisms underlying syntactic processing in the human brain. Conversely, the insights obtained from human neuroimaging (EEG/fMRI) and eye tracking will provide critical constraints on the parameters and algorithms used in machine.

The Computational Cognitive Neuroimaging Group (Uta Noppeney) is seeking an enthusiastic PhD candidate with strong analytical and quantitative abilities. Applicants should have a background in computer science, computational linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, physics or related areas. Prior experience in statistical analysis and/or machine learning would be an advantage.

The Computational Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab is based at the Department of Psychology and the Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics Centre of the University of Birmingham, UK. The centre provides an excellent multidisciplinary, interactive and collaborative research environment combining expertise in cognitive neuroimaging, psychophysics and computational neuroscience. The psychology department was rated 5th in the UK research assessment exercise.

http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/psychology/research/labs/comp-cog-neuro/index.aspx
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/cncr/index.aspx
Informal enquires about the project can be directed to Professor Noppeney ([Email Address Removed])

How to apply:
• Apply directly via the University of Birmingham Postgraduate application system, the Postgraduate portal. (Apply button)
• Please detail the advertised supervisor and project title under the ’Research Information’ section of the application form.