This photo is from 2007, of me and my daughter. We appear to be looking at you suspiciously, but don't be deterred.
CONTACT DETAILS
| addr: |
Department of Computing
Macquarie University North Ryde NSW 2109 Australia |
| email: | madras AT science . mq . edu . au |
| phone: | +61 2 9850 9580 |
| fax: | +61 2 9850 9551 |
| room: | building E6A, room 380 |
Workwise, I'm a senior lecturer in the Department of Computing of Macquarie University, in Sydney, Australia. Before that, I spent two years at the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Research in Cognitive Science.
RESEARCH
I work in language technology and computational linguistics, and am a member of Macquarie's Centre for Language Technology.
In general terms, the theme of my research is language structure and transformation. I'm interested in the ways that natural languages and their mathematical or formal representations can be transformed, the contexts in which these transformations occur, and the situations where it's better to use one kind of representation or another; specifically, I work on machine translation, paraphrase and related areas. I'm also interested in sentiment analysis, and how sentiment affects language choices. For more detail, there is:
- a description of the particular projects I'm working on;
- a list of publications;
- a list of my external grants;
- a list of my students.
NEWS: I have an ARC Discovery grant (2010-2012) on a project on Natural Language Generation for Aboriginal languages. The funding will cover a postdoctoral research position for three years, and two PhD scholarships, which will be advertised by early 2010. In the meantime, if you happen to stumble onto this page and are interested, send me an email.
TEACHING
In semester 2, 2009, I'm doing the following:
- I'm teaching on an honours/postgrad unit COMP496/901: Research Methods and Communication;
- I'm teaching on an honours unit COMP473: Advanced Algorithms;
- I'm the convenor for the honours programme;
- I'm on the "steering committee" for HDR students (which just means that I sometimes help out Dr Abhaya Nayak, Director of Higher Degree Research (HDR) Students);
- I have some proposed honours projects; and
- I have office hours by appointment (send an email).
I've also taught a range of units over the years.
I think it's useful for students to know something about what their teachers are likely to be like. As one source of information, there's the sporadic appearance of the Alternative Calendar, but computing units are hardly ever mentioned there, and it usually sounds as if there's only ever a couple of (disgruntled) respondants. So, in case you're thinking of taking a class with me, here's a link to evaluations for several of my units.
OTHER
Some other things.