C.M. Downey
PhD Student- Computational Linguistics, University of Washington
About Me
I am currently a PhD student in Computational Linguistics with the University of Washington Department of Linguistics, under the advisement of Dr. Gina-Anne Levow. I also belong to the CLMBR lab group within UW NLP, headed by Shane Steinert-Threlkeld. Before coming to UW, I earned a B.S. in Linguistics and Russian at Tulane University, where I also completed extensive coursework in Computer Science, including algorithmic analysis, machine learning, and computational linguistics.
The main focus of my research is NLP for low-resource and endangered languages, as well as improving cross-lingual/multi-lingual NLP more generally. I work most often with North American Indigenous languages such as Lakota and Inuktitut. I also often work with highly inflecting Slavic and Uralic languages such as Russian, Hungarian, and Saami.
One specific topic of interest for me is the unsupervised segmentation of units of language, due to the fact that many Indigenous and otherwise understudied languages have a complex structure within a single “word” as delineated by spaces that appear to each side. This requires NLP that diverges significantly from models constructed for English and other European languages, in which single “words” tend to have much less internal structure.
It is my aim to channel my research not just towards the acquisition of linguistic knowledge, but towards the more concrete task of Language Revitalization among groups who have experienced serious attrition of their native language due to colonialism and other global influences. Many of these communities have experienced outside pressure to give up their traditional language, and many of these languages now exist only in archives by-and-large inaccessible to Indigenous groups. It is my hope that NLP can be a tool to restore such languages to some level of vibrancy within Indigenous communities by making technology-based language-learning easy and accessible for both students and teachers in Indigenous groups, even if the language in question has been dormant for generations.
Research
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University of Washington FLAS Fellowship
September 2019 - June 2020Fellow: Supervised by Nadine Fabbi
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Low Resource Languages for Emergent Incedents (LORELEI)
August - October 2019Research Assistant: Supervised by Gina-Anne Levow
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Newberry Research Library Summer Institute
July - August 2019Fellow: Supervised by Jenny Davis
Employment
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University of Washington Department of Linguistics
September 2018 - PresentTeaching/Research Assistant: Supervised by Richard Wright
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Apple: Siri Web Answers
June - September 2020AI|ML Intern: Supervised by Chris DuBois
Invited Talks
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Archival Work and Language Revitalization at the NCAIS Summer Institute
December 13 2019UW Linguistics Field Reports; Seattle, Washington
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Dependency vs Phrase-Structure Trees
October 4 2019UW Linguistics Syntax Roundtable; Seattle, Washington
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Subword Segmentation for Morphologically Complex Languages
September 28 2019UW Linguistics Field Reports; Seattle, Washington
Teaching
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LING 575: Deep Learning for Natural Language Processing
Spring 2021Teaching Assistant: Supervised by Shane Steinert-Threlkeld
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LING 566: Introduction to Syntax for Computational Linguistics
Fall 2020Teaching Assistant: Supervised by Emily M. Bender
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LING 200: Introduction to Linguistic Thought
Fall 2020Teaching Assistant: Supervised by Richard Wright, also:
Fall 2018 with Laura McGarrity
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ASL 305: Introduction to American Deaf Culture
Spring 2019Grader: Supervised by Lance Forshay
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LING 406: Introduction to Syntax
Fall 2018Grader: Supervised by Kirby Conrod
Guest Lectures
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Computational Linguistics and Language Revitalization
May 4 2020as part of LING 234: Language and Diversity; University of Washington; Instructed by Lorna Rozelle
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Computational Linguistics and Language Revitalization
January 27 2020as part of ENGL 4717: NAIS Capstone Seminar; University of Colorado; Instructed by Penelope Kelsey
Service
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ACL Reviewer-Paper Assignment System
December 2020 - February 2021Research Assistant/Developer: Supervised by Fei Xia