HLTCon: Text Analytics in a Big Data World - Understanding Today's Refugee Crisis

With 60 million refugees on the move, more than ever before in human history, we must understand who is among them to secure the land and protect the individual.

Join us at HLTCon to discuss how innovations in HLT are leading the challenge. You will have a unique opportunity to network with fellow senior officials, expert linguists, technologists, and product owners across industry and government.

CRACKING THE CODE TO THE NEXT BREAKTHROUGH IN MACHINE TRANSLATION

Everyone is looking for the next breakthrough in machine translation. No one believes that machine translation is a completely solved problem. Most people would like to see machine translation systems produce higher quality results.

A good translation is one where the meaning of the source is preserved, and it is rendered correctly in the target language. Users expect accuracy on all of the various levels–grammar, syntax, semantics and pragmatics.

Dr. O’Neill-Brown has been carrying out research and development aimed at improving machine translation accuracy. Her work includes the development of novel methods that take advantage of semantics and pragmatics to increase user understanding of machine translated results. This talk will present the results of these research and development efforts. Dr. O’Neill-Brown will discuss how these techniques aid user understanding of machine translated results and boost machine translation quality.

Speaker and Presenter Information

KEYNOTE: DR. PATRICIA O’NEILL-BROWN - Chief, Human Language Technology, CIA

Dr. Patricia O’Neill-Brown is the Chief of Human Language Technology (HLT) for the CIA. She is responsible for developing the strategy for implementing HLT across the enterprise. She is a leading expert on HLT, including machine translation. Dr. O’Neill-Brown holds a Ph.D in Computational Linguistics from Georgetown University.

NAREN RAMAKRISHNAN PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE at VIRGINIA TECH

Naren Ramakrishnan is the Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering at Virginia Tech and director of the Discovery Analytics Center. He currently leads the IARPA-supported EMBERS project for forecasting significant societal events.

KARTHIK DINAKAR - REID HOFFMAN FELLOW at MIT

Karthik Dinakar is a PhD candidate and Reid Hoffman Fellow at MIT. He is a computer scientist in the fields of machine learning, natural language processing and human-computer interaction to compute for empathy.

JOHN FRANK - FOUNDER AND CEO at DIFFEO

As CEO of Diffeo, John Frank manages product strategy and continues to contribute to core code development. He serves as an advisor to customers in government and industry.

DR. CATHERINE HAVASI - FOUNDER AND CEO at LUMINOSO

Dr. Catherine Havasi is co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence (AI) text analytics company Luminoso. Dr. Havasi is a research scientist in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics at the MIT Media Lab.

Expected Number of Attendees

150

Relevant Government Agencies

Air Force, Army, Navy & Marine Corps, Intelligence Agencies, DOD & Military, Dept of Health & Human Services, Dept of Homeland Security, Dept of Justice, Dept of State, Dept of Treasury, Judicial Branch Agencies, State Government, Municipal Government, CIA, Coast Guard, USAID