HLT: Current and Recent Research & Development in the Netherlands 2001-2008

HLT:Current and Recent Research & Development in the Netherlands2001-2008

Jan Odijk24 Nov 2008

OverviewEarlier HistoryInstruments & ProgrammesPlayers and their ProjectsConcluding Remarks

Earlier HistoryMT Projects in the 80sEurotra (EU, 1985- ca.1990)Distributed MT (BSO, 1984-ca.1990)Rosetta (Philips, 1985-1992)Emerging Community

Earlier HistoryCLIN (Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands) initiated in 1990After TIN (Linguistics in the Netherlands)But no associationYearly informal conference no or little pre-selectionYearly ProceedingsSelection of reviewed articleshttp://www.let.rug.nl/~vannoord/clin/clin.html

Earlier HistoryCommunity further strengthened by common projects in the 90sPriority Programme LST centered around public transportation information services (OVIS)Corpus Gesproken Nederlands (Spoken Dutch Corpus), together with Flanders

InstrumentsNWO PionierNWO VernieuwingsimpulsVeni, Vidi, Vicihttp://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOA_4YJDQ3 EZ BsikIncrease knowledge and research capacity for 5 selected areas (incl. ICT)For mixed public/ private consortia that bundle knowledge, expertise and innovative capacity http://www.senternovem.nl/BSIK/ EC (IST)

IMIXName: Interactive Multimodal Information ExtractionDuration: 2001-2008Budget: 2M4 small programmes, 3 post-doc projectsdemonstratorURL: http://www.nwo.nl/IMIX Funding: NWO

IMIX GoalsAims to develop knowledge and technology needed To find specific answers to specific questions in Dutch-language documentsusing multiple modalities at the input and output sides

STEVINName: STEVINDuration: 2004-2011Budget: 11.4M19 R&D projects14 demonstration projectsNetworking activities, educational activities, Funding: Netherlands 2/3 & Flanders 1/3 http://taalunieversum.org/taal/technologie/stevin/

STEVIN Goalscontribute to the further progress of HLT for the Dutch languagerealise an appropriate digital language infrastructure for the Dutch languagecarry out strategic research in the domains of language and speech technology, in particular in areas for which there is a large demand from specific applications and technologies; create networks and core research areas; promote the embedding of research and educate new generations of experts; encourage demand and knowledge transfer.

CATCHName: Continuous Access to Cultural HeritageDuration: 2005-??Budget: 6M until 2008 and 3M in 2008Currently 10 running projectsURL: http://www.nwo.nl/catch Funding: NWO + OCW. Cultural heritage institutes contribute in kind (2.8M so far)

CATCH GoalsAims to develop generic methods and techniquescutting across the areas of the humanities and computer science, aiming to facilitate an interaction with cultural heritage institutions.

IOP MMIName: Innovation-oriented Research Programme (IOP) Man Machine InteractionDuration: 1999-2003 (phase 1); 2004-2007Budget: ??URL: http://www.senternovem.nl/iopmensmachineinteractie/index.asp Funding: EZ (Min. of Economic Affairs)

IOP MMI Goals (phase 2)focus on the Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Intelligent Systems Which dynamic knowledge (of one another) should systems and users acquire and apply in order to optimally achieve their goals

CLARIN-NL(?)Name: Common Language Resource and Technology Infrastructure - NetherlandsDuration: 2009-2014Budget: 22M requested URL: Funding: OC&W (ESFRI)

CLARIN-NL GoalsCLARIN-NL aims to design, construct, validate, and exploit a research infrastructure that is needed to provide a sustainable and persistent eScience working environment for researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) who want to make use of language resources and technology.

Amsterdam (UvA)Institute: Informatics InstituteCore Topics: Information RetrievalQuestion AnsweringKey peopleMaarten de Rijke

Amsterdam (UvA)QASSIR (NWO, 2006-2010)Question Answering as Semistructured Information RetrievalEfFoRT (NWO, 2006-2010)Effective Focused Retrieval TechniquesUvA, (Twente)MultiMATCH (EU, 2006-2009)Multilingual/Multimedia Access To Cultural Heritage11 partners from Europe incl. UvA

Amsterdam (UvA)MuNCH (CATCH, (2005-2009)Multimedia aNalysis for Cultural Heritage.UvA, Beeld & Geluid (B&G), Digitaal Erfgoed NederlandMuSeUM (CATCH, 2005-2009)Multiple-collection Searching Using Metadata.UvA, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorisch Documentatie, Municipal Archives RotterdamA Model Checking Approach to Query Evaluation on XML Documents (NWO, 2004-2008).

Amsterdam (UvA)FactMine (IMIX, 2004-2007)Fact and Ontology Mining for Question AnsweringUvA, DFKI, Antwerpen, Erasmus MCAID (Dutch Government, 2004-2008)Adaptive Information Disclosure.

Amsterdam (UvA)ITEQA (NWO, 2004-2007)Inference for Temporal Question Answering.DuOMAn (STEVIN, 2008-2011)Dutch Online Media AnalysisUvA, Groningen, Gent, TrendLight, GridLineDAESO (STEVIN), Cornetto (STEVIN), KYOTO (EU IST), CLARIN-NL

Amsterdam (UvA)Institute: ILLCTopicsData Oriented Parsing (DOP)Key Persons:Remko SchaRens BodKhalil Simaan

Amsterdam (UvA)U-DOP (NWO VICI, 2006-2011)Unsupervised Learning with the DOP ModelDOP and Unsupervised Grammar Induction (NWO, 2004-2007) Unsupervised stochastic grammar induction from unlabeled data DOP and Learning Stochastic Tree-Grammars (NWO, 2003-2006)

Amsterdam (VU)Department: Language and CommunicationCore Topics: Computational Lexicology Key peoplePiek Vossen

Amsterdam (VU)Cornetto (STEVIN, 2006-2008)Combinatorial and Relational Network as Toolkit for Dutch Language TechnologyVU, UvA, Leuven, IrionKYOTO (EU FP7 ICT, 2008-2011)Knowledge Yielding Ontologies for Transition-based OrganizationVU, 8 other European partnersCLARIN

GroningenDepartment: Centre for Language and Cognition/ Computational LinguisticsCore Topics:Syntax and Parsing Key peopleJohn NerbonneGertjan van NoordGosse Bouma

GroningenAlpino (NWO PIONIER, 2000-2005)Algorithms for Linguistic ProcessingQADR (IMIX, 2004-2008)Question Answering for Dutch using Dependency RelationsGroningen, SpectrumCOREA (STEVIN, 2005-2007)Coreference Resolution for Extracting AnswersGroningen, Antwerpen, Language and Computing

GroningenLASSY (STEVIN, 2006-2009)Large Scale Syntactic Annotation of written DutchGroningen, LeuvenSCRATCH (CATCH, ??-??)SCRipt Analysis Tools for the Cultural HeritageGroningen, Nationaal ArchiefD-COI (STEVIN), IRME (STEVIN), DAISY (STEVIN), DuOMAn (STEVIN), PaCo-MT (STEVIN), CLARIN, CLARIN-NL

NijmegenInstitute: Centre for Language and Speech TechnologyCore Topics:Speech ProcessingLanguage Resource DevelopmentKey peopleLou Boves, Nelleke Oostdijk, Helmer Strik, Henk van den Heuvel

NijmegenNORISC (IMIX, 2004-2007)Next generatiOn template based Recognition for Interactive man-machine Speech CommunicationCOMIC (EU IST, 2002-2005)COnversational Multimodal Interaction with ComputersMATIS (IOP-MMI, ??-??)Multimodal Access to Transaction and Information Services

NijmegenD-COI (STEVIN, 2005-2006)Dutch Language Corpus InitiativeNijmegen, Tilburg, Twente, Groningen, Utrecht, Leuven, PolderlandSoNaR (STEVIN, 2008-2011)STEVIN Nederlandstalig ReferentiecorpusNijmegen, Tilburg, Twente, Utrecht, Leuven, GentJASMIN-CGN (STEVIN, 2005-2007)Extension of CGN with speech of children, non-natives, elderly and human-machine interactionNijmegen, Leuven, Talkinghome

NijmegenACORNS (EU, 2008-2010)Acquisition of Communication and Recognition Skills Intends to [] create an artificial agent that is capable of acquiring human verbal communication behaviour Nijmegen, 5 other European partnersAvoiding the ham in hamster (NWO VENI 2006-2010)Modelling the use of non-segmental information in human spoken-word recognition

NijmegenBATS (ICTRegie, IBBT, 2008-2012)Topic and Speaker Tracking in Broadcast Archives Nijmegen, LeuvenSPEXSpeech Processing Expertise CentreCollection, Annotation & ValidationELRA Speech Validation Centre

NijmegenAutonomata TOO (STEVIN, 2008-2010)Autonomata Transfer of Output Nijmegen, Gent, Utrecht, TeleAtlas, NuanceDISCO (STEVIN, 2008-2011)Development and Integration of Speech technology into COurseware for language learningNijmegen, Linguapolis Antwerpen, Taal- & Communicatiecentrum Nijmegen, PolderlandAutonomata (STEVIN), MIDAS (STEVIN), NBest (STEVIN), Praat (STEVIN), SPRAAK (STEVIN), CLARIN, CLARIN-NL, A Propos (IOP-MMI)

SoesterbergInstitute: TNO Defense & SecurityCore Topics:Speech ProcessingSpeech Technology EvaluationKey peopleDavid van Leeuwen

SoesterbergNBest (STEVIN, 2006-2008)Northern and Southern Dutch Benchmark Evaluation of Speech recognition TechnologyTNO Soesterberg, Nijmegen, Twente, Leuven, Gent. DelftSPRAAK (STEVIN)

TilburgInstitute: Tilburg Centre for Creative Computing, Induction of Linguistic Knowledge (ILK) Research groupCore Topics:Machine-learningMemory-Based learningKey peopleAntal van den Bosch

TilburgROLAQUAD (IMIX, 2004-2008)Robust Language Understanding in Question-Answering DialogueTilburg, TextkernelImplicit Linguistics (NWO VICI, 2005-2009)Machine Learning of Text-to-Text Processing,A Propos (IOP MMI, 2006-2009?)Proactive Personalization for Professional Document WritingTilburg, Nijmegen, industrial partners

TilburgMITCH (CATCH, 2007-2009?)Mining for Information in Texts from the Cultural HeritageNational Museum of Natural History, Tilburg D-COI (STEVIN), CLARIN, CLARIN-NL, SoNaR (STEVIN)

TilburgInstitute: Communication and Cognition Core Topics:Communication and CognitionLanguage GenerationMultimodalityKey peopleEmiel Krahmer

TilburgIMOGEN (IMIX, 2004-2008)Interactive Multimodal Output GenerationTilburg and TwenteBridging the gap between psycholinguistics and computational linguistics (NWO VICI, 2007-2011)Generation of referring expressionsDAESO (STEVIN, 2006-2009)Detecting and Exploiting Semantic OverlapTilburg, Antwerpen, Amsterdam (UvA), Textkernel

TilburgTUNA (EPSRC (UK), 2003-2007)Towards a Unified Algorithm for the Generation of Referring ExpressionsAberdeen, Open University (UK), TilburgFOAP (NWO Vidi, 2003-2007)Functions of Audio-Visual Prosody

TilburgInstitute: Communication Information Sciences Core Topics:Computational Semantics and PragmaticsDialogue TheoryMultimodal InteractionKey peopleHarry Bunt

TilburgParadime (IMIX, 2004-2008)Parallel Agent-based Dialogue Management Engine

TwenteInstitute: Human Media InteractionCore TopicsMultimodalitySpeech RecognitionKey peopleFranciska de Jong, Anton NijholtArjan van Hessen, Roelof Ordelman

TwenteAMI (EU IST, 2004-2006)Augmented Multi-party InteractionIDIAP (CH) and 11 other partners incl. TwenteM4 (EU IST, 2002-2005)MultiModal Meeting ManagerSheffield and 8 other partners incl. TwenteDRUID (Telematica??-2003)Multimedia Indexing & Retrieval on the basis of Image Processing & Language and Speech TechnologyTNO TPD, TNO TM, Twente, CWI

TwenteSAFIR (EU, 2003-2007)Speech Automatic Friendly Interface Research17 European partners incl. TwenteAngelica (NWO Meervoud (?), 2003-2007)A Natural-Language Generator for Embodied, Lifelike Conversational Agents

TwentePidgin (EZ, 2002-2004)Self-learning Cross Lingual InterfaceTwente, Irion, Carp, New Law FacilitiesChoral (CATCH, 2005-2009)Access to Oral HistoryTwente, Municipal Archives Rotterdam. Radio Rijnmond, Erasmus University RotterdamMultimediaN (Bsik, 2004-2008)MultimediaN/N5Multiple research groups and 20+ industrial partners

TwenteVIDIAM (IMIX, 2005-2008)Dialog Management and the Visual ChannelAMIDA (EU, 2006-2009)Augmented Multi-party Interaction with Distance AccessAMI consortium

TwenteMESH-EU (EU, 2006-2009)Multimedia Semantic Syndication for Enhanced News ServicesTwente and 10 other European partnersMediaCampaign (EU, 2006-2009)Discovering, inter-relating and navigating cross-media campaign knowledgeTwente and 7 other European partnersD-COI (STEVIN), NBest (STEVIN), SPRAAK (STEVIN), SoNaR (STEVIN), CLARIN, CLARIN-NL

UtrechtInstitute: UIL-OTSCore TopicsNetworksLanguage Technology for e-LearningLinguistic ResourcesLR and LT InfrastructureKey peopleJan OdijkSteven KrauwerPaola MonachesiGerrit Bloothooft

UtrechtELSNET (EU, 1991-Current)A Europe-based forum dedicated to human language technologies aiming to advance R&D in human language technologies in Europe LT4eL (EU IST, (2005-2008)Language Technology for eLearningUtrecht and 11 other European partnersLTfLL (EU IST, (2008-2011)Language Technology for LifeLong LearningOpen University and 8 other European partners incl. UtrechtIRME (STEVIN, 2005-2007)Identification and lexical Representation of Multiword ExpressionsUtrecht, Groningen, Van Dale

UtrechtCLARIN (EU ESFRI, 2008-2010)Common LAnguage Resource and technology InfrastructureUtrecht, Nijmegen, and 35+ other partnersFlaReNet (EU IST 2008-2011)Fostering Language Resources NetworkPisa, Utrecht, ILSP Athens, ELDA, LIMSI, Vienna, BarcelonaCLARIN-NL (submitted to OC&W, 2009-2014)Common LAnguage Resource and technology Infrastructure, Netherlands partUtrecht, Nijmegen, UvA, VU, Twente, Groningen, Tilburg and many others ISLE (EU IST), Autonomata (STEVIN), D-COI (STEVIN), SoNaR (STEVIN), Autonomata TOO

Concluding RemarksSolid CommunityLargely complementary, some overlapBut always close collaborationOverall the situation in the Netherlands for LST research and development is pretty goodesp. in comparison to other countriesThe situation is getting more difficultlarge thematic programmes instead of specific technologiesThe options for fundamental research are limited and decreasing

Thank You

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Older or Marginally RelatedCHOICE (CATCH)semi-automatic semantic annotation and employing context information for ensuring continuous access to the cultural riches.B&G, VU, Telematica, MPI, ICN

Older or Marginally RelatedSTITCH (CATCH)Semantic Interoperability to Access Cultural HeritageKB, VU, MPI