CURRICULUM VITAE

Prof. Koenraad de Smedt

Updated February 7, 2006.

1. PERSONAL DATA

Surname: De Smedt
First names: Koenraad Jan Maria Johanna
Born: October 30, 1954 in Wilrijk (now Antwerpen), Belgium
Nationality: Belgian

Home address:
Sydneskleiven 2
5010 Bergen, Norway
Mobile telephone: +47 95836558

Work address:
University of Bergen
Department of Linguistics and Comparative Literature
Sydnesplassen 7
5007 Bergen, Norway
Telephone: +47 55582052
Telefax: +47 55589354
E-mail: desmedt@uib.no
WWW page: http://ling.uib.no/desmedt

2. MAIN QUALIFICATIONS

1966 Completed 6 years of elementary school in Hoboken (Belgium).

1972 Completed 6 years of secondary school in Antwerpen (Belgium).

1973 Completed 1 year of High School (12th grade) in Pleasanton (California) as a Y.F.U. exchange student.

1975 Obtained diploma "Kandidaat in de Germaanse Filologie" from UFSIA, University of Antwerpen (Belgium).

1977 Obtained diploma "Licentiaat in de Germaanse Filologie" from UIA, University of Antwerpen (Belgium) with a major in English and a minor in Linguistics. Graduated magna cum laude. The final thesis was a technical report on a component of a Natural Language Parsing System. The supervisor was Luc Steels.

1977 Completed IVth International Summer School on Computational and Mathematical Linguistics in Pisa (Italy) with certificate signed by Antonio Zampolli.

1978 Obtained teaching credentials "Aggregaat didaktiek" for Dutch and English at UIA, University of Antwerpen (Belgium).

1986 Completed course 'Orientatie op universitair onderwijs', (University didactics) at IOWO Nijmegen (The Netherlands).

1990 Obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands). Title of the doctoral thesis: 'Incremental Sentence Generation: a computer model of grammatical encoding'. The supervisors were Prof. Gerard Kempen and Prof. Luc Steels.

Language competence: Dutch (C2), English (C2), Norwegian (C1), French (B1), German (B1/A2).

3. WORK EXPERIENCE

3.1. POSITIONS HELD

1978-1979 University of Antwerpen (UIA). Research in Computational Linguistics. Lectures on computer programming. Supervision of students with research projects in Computational Linguistics. Development and implementation of statistical software.

1979-1982 Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (NFWO). Appointment as junior researcher at the Department of Germanic Philology of the University of Antwerpen (UIA). Research on the use of AI methods (frames, objects, logic) for the representation of linguistic knowledge. Teaching in Artificial Intelligence and Computational Linguistics for students of linguistics.

1980 (3 weeks) Schlumberger-Doll Research (Ridgefield, USA). Short research project concerning the use of case grammar in AI representation languages.

1981 (3 months) Schlumberger-Doll Research (Ridgefield, USA). Research project on object-oriented representation languages and man-machine interaction via high-level command languages and graphical interfaces.

1983-1985 University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands). Research fellow appointed at the Unit of Experimental Psychology. This research project was aimed at application-oriented studies in Natural Language Technology, sponsored by the Ministries of Education and Economic Affairs and by the European Community (ESPRIT project OS-82). Research in the areas of sentence production (Incremental Procedural Grammar), morphological analysis, the lexicon, and representation of linguistic knowledge. Development and implementation of CommonORBIT, and object-oriented representation language, and a 'grammar spreadsheet' in Calliope, a fifth-generation intelligent text processor. Lectures in Language Technology and Lisp.

1985-1992 University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands). Lecturer appointed at the Unit of Experimental Psychology. Teaching duties in the Cognitive Science programme. Lectures mainly in the areas of Computational Psycholinguistics, Artificial Intelligence, Lisp, and Symbolic Programming Paradigms. Research in incremental sentence generation and parallelism in language processing. Detachment at NICI (Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information). Development and implementation of Segment Grammar and the simulation model IPF (Incremental Parallel Formulator).

1992-1995 Leiden University (The Netherlands). Lecturer appointed at the Unit of Experimental and Theoretical Psychology. Teaching for students of Experimental Psychology and Social Science Informatics. Research in the area of computational models of human sentence processing.

1995-present University of Bergen (Norway). Professor in Computer Linguistics at the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Literature, Section for Linguistic Studies. Teaching in computational linguistics and language technology". Research in computer models of human language processing and in language technology applications. Also part-time affiliated as senior researcher with the research group for language technology at AKSIS.

3.2. SELECTED SCIENTIFIC AND MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES

1985 Member of the founding committee for CELEX (Centre for Lexical Databases, Nijmegen).

1985-1987 Participation in the definition and execution of ESPRIT project OS-82 (Intelligent Workstation).

1986 Lecturer at the summer school on Computers in Linguistics (Amsterdam).

1986-1989 Member of the CELEX steering committee on Data and standards.

1987 Lecturer at the summer school on Computational Linguistics (Leiden).

1987-1995 Member of the Board of Directors of the Cognitive Technology Foundation.

1988 Tutorial on Natural Language Processing at the 8th European Conference on AI, Muenchen (together with Dr. U. Zernik).

1988 Tutorial on Natural Language Processing at the Dutch Conference on AI applications, The Hague (together with Drs. D. Bakker).

1988-1989 Sattelite TV broadcast course on Natural Language Processing for the European Programme of Advanced Continuing Education (PACE), (together with Dr. U. Zernik).

1989-1992 Member of the Board of Directors of the Cognitive Science Programme at the University of Nijmegen. Coordinator of the study programme.

1989-1992 Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Cognitive Technology Foundation.

1990 Member of the programme committee of the 1st International Workshop on Inheritance in Natural Language Processing, Tilburg.

1990 Advisor to the SPIN-MMC programme.

1990 Product development manager of computer lexicons for English and German for the Cognitive Technology Foundation.

1991 Member of the programme committee of the 6th International Workshop on Natural Language Generation.

1991 Rapporteur at the evaluation of project proposals for the ESPRIT 1991 Workprogramme

1991 Part-time detachment at the SPIN programme, project Man-Machine Communication with Natural Language.

1992 Expert at the Language & Technology Working Panels in Luxemburg, May 12-13, invited by the European Commission.

1993-1995 Member of the graduate school EPOS (recognized by KNAW in 1994) based on qualification 'outstanding scholar'.

1995 Chairman of the Programme Committee and main organizer of the 5th European Workshop on Natural Language Generation, Leiden, May 20-22.

1995 Expert at the Language Technology brainstorming meeting in Luxemburg, 27-28 June, invited by the European Commission.

1995-1997 Doctoral programme coordinator (Sep. 261995 - June 1997).

1996 Research fellow at NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study) in the project group Computational Models of Human Syntactic Processing, February 1-31, 1996.

1996 Expert reviewer for the COMPASS project (EC Telematics LRE) April 23-24, 1996.

1996 Joint organizer and co-chair (with Gerard Kempen) of the NIAS Workshop on Computational Models of Human Syntactic Processing, Wassenaar, The Netherlands, June 5-8.

1996-1999 Project area leader of SCARRIE (a DG13 Telematics LE project) (since Dec. 1, 1996).

1997 Director of research at Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities (Jan. 21- Sep. 1, 1997).

1997 Member of the programme committee for the 6th European Workshop on Natural Language Generation.

1997 Area chair for the ACL/EACL'97 conference, Madrid, July 7-12, 1997.

1997 Member of the programme committee for the 1st Conference on Computational Psycholinguistics, Berkeley, Aug. 10-12, 1997.

1997-1998 Vice chairman of the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Literature.

1997-1998 Member of the Faculty Council.

1997-2001 Chairman of the Faculty Committee on Information Technology.

1998 Programme co-chair for the international conference The Future of the Humanities in the Digital Age.

1995-present Member of the Board of Advisors of the Cognitive Technology foundation.

1996-2000 Project coordinator of the DG22 SOCRATES/ERASMUS thematic network project on Advanced Computing in the Humanities (ACO*HUM).

1996-1999 Scientific coordinator of the Norwegian part of the CEC TELEMATICS project SCARRIE on Scandinavian Proofreading Tools.

1997 Interim Director of research at Humanistisk Datasenter (Norwegian Center for Computing in the Humanities).

1997 Organizer of ACO*HUM policy symposium, Granada, Nov. 1-2.

1997-2000 Member on the board of the Research Programme for Humanities Information Technology.

1997-present Member of the ELSNET task group on Training and Mobility, member of the programme committees for ELSNET summer schools.

1998 Co-organizer of the international conference The Future of the Humanities in the Digital Age, Bergen, Sep. 25-28, 1998.

1998 Member of the programme committee for the conference Språkteknologi på norsk (NIFST/Norsk språkråd), Oslo, Oct. 12-13, 1998.

1998 Teaching mobility grant for teaching at Universidad Complutense, Madrid, November 18-27, 1998.

1998-1999 Coordinator of the NLP courseware for web operation project in the ELSNET LE training showcase.

1999 Chairman of the local organization committee for EACL'99, Bergen, June 7-11, 1999.

1999-2000 Member of the UoB - HiB joint educational committee on the language technology curriculum.

1999-2001 Chairman of the Section on Linguistic Studies, University of Bergen.

1999-2001 Chairman of the National Scientific Committee on Linguistic Studies (Nasjonalt fagråd for lingvistiske fag).

2000 Expert at CEC DG Education and Culture for the assessment of TNP proposals for the selection round of 2000 (April 12-14, 2000).

2001 Expert at CEC DG Education and Culture for the assessment of TNP proposals for the selection round of 2001 (May 2-6, 2001).

2001 Invited by Beijing Foreign Studies University to a bilateral workshop on corpus linguistics (Nov. 4-6, 2001).

2001-2002 Guest researcher at CNTS (Antwerp) and Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik (Nijmegen).

2001-2005 Scientific coordinator of the Norwegian Documentation Centre for Language Technology.

2002 Organizer of the International seminar on corpus alignment.

2002-2004 Participant in the Nordic research networks SCANDSUM (Summarization for Scandinavian languages) and Nordic Treebank Network.

2002-2007 Scientific coordinator of BATMULT: Marie Curie Training Site on multilinguistic tools and resources.

2004 Invited participant in Foresight by the Research Council of Norway (Sep. 16-17 and Oct. 20-21)

2004-2008 Scientific coordinator or MULTILINGUA: Marie Curie Early Stage Training site on multilingual knowledge tools.

2004-2008 Scientific coordinator of TREPIL: Norwegian treebank pilot project.

2005-2007 Chairman of the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Literature, member of the Faculty Council and Faculty Steering Committee.

3.3. REVIEWING AND MEMBERSHIPS

Reviews of submitted papers and programme committee work for Computational Linguistics; the Machine Translation Journal; Journal of Experimental Psychology; 7th European Conference on AI; 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th European Workshop on Natural Language Generation; 1st International Workshop on Inheritance in Natural Language Processing; 6th, 7th, 8th International Workshop on Natural Language Generation; IJCAI-93; COLING-96; ACL/EACL'97; Conference on Computational Psycholinguistics 1997; ELSNET Summer Schools 1999-2002, ACL/EACL 2001 Workshop on Sharing Tools and Resources for Research and Education, NoDaLiDa 2005, TLT'05, and for several books.

Project reviews, committee reports and advisory work for Dutch Linguistics Foundation; SPIN-MMC; Interuniversity Expertise centre ProGAMMA; NWO-Talent; European Commission; Sail Port Northern Europe, Norsk språkråd, Norges forskningsråd.

Opponent at a PhD in Stockholm 2003.

Member of the Association for Computational Linguistics (European Chapter).

3.4. TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Regular credit courses:

1978/1979 Programming in Pascal

1980/1981 and 1981/1982 Lisp

1981/1982 Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing

1983/1984-1987/1988 Programming in Lisp

1983/1984-1984/1985 Language Technology and Computational Psycholinguistics

1986/1987-1992/1993 Computational Psycholinguistics

1988/1989-1990/1991 Symbolic Programming in Lisp

1988/1989-1989/1990 Programming Paradigms for Cognitive Modelling and AI

1990/1991 Artificial Intelligence

1990/1991-1991-1992 Symbolic Programming Paradigms for Cognitive Modelling and AI

1992/1993 Computational Models of Human Language Processing

1993/1994-1994/1995 Language: A human skill

1994/1995-2003 Computational Linguistics (grunnfag)

1995/1996-2003 Computational Linguistics (mellomfag)

1996/1997-2003 Computational Linguistics and Language Technology (hovedfag)

2003/2004-2004/2005 Corpus methods for language masters students

2003/2004-present Computational Linguistics and Language Technology (bachelor, masters)

Supervision of masters theses: