Ann Copestake
Professor of Computational Linguistics
Department of Computer Science and Technology ("Computer Lab")
University of Cambridge
William Gates Building,
15 JJ Thomson Avenue
Cambridge CB3 0FD, UK
email: firstname.lastname @cl.cam.ac.uk
Research Theme
Natural Language theme page
Contacting me
Email is best: I hope everyone can work out my email from the information
above.
But please note that I am on sabbatical and that I am not taking on students or interns. I have no vacancies for postdocs.
Research overview
My research is in Natural Language Processing (NLP) / Computational
Linguistics (a branch of AI), mostly in formal representation issues,
compositional and lexical semantics
and natural language generation.
I am also the original
developer of the LKB system
which is a freely available grammar and lexicon development environment
for constraint-based frameworks including HPSG.
I've worked on a variety of application areas including scientific
text processing,
information extraction, augmentative
and alternative communication (AAC), machine translation,
Natural Language Interfaces, lexical acquisition
and on tools for lexicographers.
Current Projects
I am one of the Co-PIs on
Giving Voice
to Digital Democracies
I am a member of the Advisory Group for The Accelerate Programme for Scientific
Discovery
I have a long-term involvement
in DELPH-IN.
This is not a conventional
funded project but
a loosely structured consortium of researchers developing open source grammars
and technology for linguistically-motivated NLP.
My main involvement is with the development of semantic representations
(MRS/RMRS/DMRS) and in the LKB grammar development environment.
See the list of projects
for details of some past funded projects for which I have been PI at Cambridge.
The larger projects have their own web pages.
PhD students
Publications
See my Google Scholar profile. I no longer actively maintain
my publications list but keep it available for downloadable versions of older papers
and reports.
LKB system links
Short Biography
After getting a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge
(mostly Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry),
I worked for Unilever Research for two years, and
then did the Diploma in Computer Science at Cambridge. I started
doing research in
Natural Language Processing/Computational Linguistics
at the
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
in 1985. I worked for ten years on a
series of projects, including
ACQUILEX. During that time
I also did a PhD in
Computer Science at the University of Sussex
(1990-1992),
was a visitor at
Xerox PARC (1993/4) and
worked on the Verbmobil project
for the University of Stuttgart (1994/5). From July 1994 to October 2000
I was at
CSLI, Stanford University,
as a Senior Researcher.
I became a University Lecturer at Cambridge in October 2000
and am now a Professor. I became Head of Department on May 1 2018 and finished my term on September 30 2023.
Ann Copestake
Created: February 2, 2001
Last updated: October 4, 2023