My research is in natural language processing (NLP) and interactive machine learning. I focus on how to learn an NLP model by interacting with a user or aggregating unreliable annotations from multiple sources. Current NLP models usually require many training examples to adapt them to a new task or domain. However, if we could instruct a model what to do differently in a new task, users could quickly take control of its behaviour. When we need to collect annotations, the labels often come from multiple annotators, e.g., from crowdsourcing. I am interested in how to combine these labels to estimate a gold standard, especially for ambiguous labelling tasks with high disagreement between annotators. My work employs Bayesian methods in combination with deep learning to handle uncertainty due to small or unreliable datasets.

Among various applications of my work, I am particularly interested in disaster response, disaster risk reduction and sustainability, where large amounts of valuable information are often stored in unstructured data sources, such as social media, analysts’ reports or satellite imagery. These are prime use cases for interactive methods, as models must adapt to new locations and situations in limited time.

Biography

I joined the University of Bristol in early 2020 as a lecturer (assistant professor), working at the join between natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning. Previously, I was a postdoc at the Ubiquitous Knowledge Processing (UKP) lab at TU Darmstadt, Germany, from 2016 to 2020, where I developed experience in NLP. Prior to that I was a Phd student and then postdoc at the Machine Learning Research group at the University of Oxford, working on Bayesian machine learning methods. Before my PhD, I was a research engineer at HP Labs. I have extensive experience collaborating with industry partners, including Man-AHL and Aleph Insights, as well as research organisations such as The Zooniverse.   

I am responsible for teaching new courses on Text Analytics (Data Science MSc), Dialogue and Narrative (CDT in interactive AI). I am a member of the Intelligent Systems research group at Bristol.

Keywords

Natural language processing, NLP, machine learning, Bayesian methods, interactive AI, interactive learning, crowdsourcing, annotation, preference learning.