Activities

2024

• Awarded Grant from the National Science Foundation to develop Retico

• Invited Talk “Generating Robotic Sequences Using LLMs” at NLG in the Lowlands Workshop, Bielefeld, Germany, June 2024.

• Invited Talk “Language Learning, Emotion, and Robots for Small LLMs” at Foundations of Computational Linguistics Symposium at Potsdam University, Potsdam, Germany.

• Keynote Address "Robots and LLMs: Advancements and Challenges" at Scarecrows in Oz: Large Language Models in Human-Robot Interaction Workshop @HRI. Boulder, Colorado. 

• Invited Talk "ChatGPT and LLMs: An Overview" for Idaho Department of Labor

• Invited Talk "Understanding Large Language Models" at the LSAMP Conference, April 2024. Boise, Idaho. 

• Panelist "AI in Education" at KTVB, Boise. 

• Panelist "Frontiers in AI" for WMED. Boise, Idaho.

• Panelist "AI in Research" at Research Computing Days, April 2024. Boise, Idaho.

• Invited Talk on LLMs in K-12 Education, IDLA. Boise, Idaho.

• Invited Talk "What is a LLM and Why Should I Care?" at Idaho Society of Professional Engineers Week Conference. Boise, Idaho.

• Panelist "AI Panel" at Idaho Educational Technology Association Conference. Boise, Idaho. 

• Panelist "Building Interactions: Speech and Dialog in HRI" at TAHRI, 2024. Boulder, Colorado.

• Panelist "Building Software: HRI Software Architectures" at TAHRI, 2024. Boulder, Colorado.

• Panelist "Reliability, Safety and Trustworthiness of LLMs in HRI" at Human – Large Language Model Interaction Workshop @HRI. Boulder, Colorado.

• Panelist "AI Panel" for the Idaho Press Club, May 2024. Boise, Idaho. 

2023

• Invited talk "Robotic Grounding and LLMs: Advancements and Challenges" at the Cognitive Informatics Seminar, Université de Montréal 

• Interviewed for article "ChatGPT isn’t going away, teachers have an opportunity to shape how we use it" on The Arbiter

• Featured in Diversity in Action Fall 2023 Issue (p 43-44)

• Associate Editor for Dialogue & Discourse Journal

• Topic Editor for Frontiers Special Topic "Dialogue with Robots: Constructive Approaches for Understanding Communication"

• Speaker "Mashup Series" on Meaning and AI, Boise State University, Boise, Idaho

• Presenter & Panelist "AI for Lawyers: What Is It and How Can It Help My Practice" in the Idaho Bar Association Annual Meeting, Boise, Idaho. 

• Elected Treasurer of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue (SigDial) 

• Panelist "The Impact of AI on Higher Education" at Boise State University

• Organizer for NSF Workshop "Dialogue and Robots"

• Presenter "AI Hackathon" at Boise State University

• Talk "ChatGPT and Large Language Models: Their Inner Workings and Limitations" at Boise State University

• Panelist "Let's Chat about ChatGPT" for the Idaho Education Technology Association Conference, Boise, Idaho (I also wrote a Medium article synthesizing my thoughts on the topic)

• Invited talk "Language: Embodied Cognition Intertwined Socially with Emotion" at the workshop on social factors in meaning change, Gothenburg, Sweden

2022

• Promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Boise State University

• Recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award

• Invited Talk for Foundations of Computational Linguistics at Potsdam University, Potsdam, Germany

• Invited Talk "How Should Models of Language Meaning Learn?" for CLASP, Gothenburg, Sweden. 

• Invited Talk "Towards Finding Understanding" at AI Impulse Series, Saarland Unviersity, Germany about my research and recently self-published fiction book series. 

• Talk for PhD in Computing Colloquium "Reflections on how to Fail at Research", Boise State University

2021

• Invited talk "Natural Language Understanding in Computational Systems" for the Osher Institute, Boise, Idaho

• Invited talk for the German Society of Computational Linguistics 

• Area chair for ACL, EMNLP 2021; reviewer for multiple conferences and journals.

• Outstanding reviewer for CoNLL 2021

• Elected to SigDial Board.

2020

• Local/Virtual Chair for the Special Interest Group on Dialogue and Discourse (SIGDIAL) Conference 2020 (see Medium article about the experience)

• Invited Talk for the Cognitive Informatics Seminar, hosted by Stevan Harnad, Université de Montréal 

• Organizer for Special Session on Robots & Mutlimodal Dialogue (RoboDial 2.0) at SIGDIAL 2020

• Panelist on Data Science Education at Boise State University for the 2020 National Workshop on Data Science Education, Berkeley California

• Invited talk for the Erasmus Mundus Language & Communication Technology Annual Meeting

• Invited talk for the Young Researchers' Roundtable on Spoken Dialogue Systems

• Invited talk for Intel's MDI Research Discussions Program

• Area Chair for ACL, EMNLP 2020

• Talk "Understanding Understanding" at PhD in Computing Colloquium at Boise State University

• Participant in the Dagstuhl Seminar: Spoken Language Interaction with Virtual Agents and Robots (SLIVAR): Towards Effective and Ethical Interaction

2019

• Participant in "Speech for Robotics Workshop" supported by NSF, which produced a report titled Spoken Language Interaction with Robots: Research Issues and Recommendations

• Panel Discussion on Machine Learning for Business at Boise Startup Week. 

• Area Chair for EMNLP 2019

• Presentation at "Physicially Situated Intelligence" Workshop at Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington

• Presentation on "Meaning in Machines" at the Boise Code Camp, 2019. 

2018

• Awarded a grant from NSF to research and develop a child-adaptive search tool with Boise State Colleagues Dr. Jerry Fails, Dr. Sole Pera, and Dr. Katherine Wright, https://cast.boisestate.edu/

• Boise Startup Week Tech Track Panelist for "AI in Academia and Industry" Boise, Idaho, October 2018

• Clearwater DevCon Invited Talk, Meaning, Language, and Intelligence in Machines, October 2018

• Presentation at "Physicially Situated Intelligence" Workshop at Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington

• Panelist "Physically Situated Dialogue Special Session" at SigDial, Melbourne, Australia

• Invited talk at YRRSDS 2018, Melbourne, Australia

• Invited talk at the Micron Data Science Seminar, Boise, Idaho.

• Presentation on Neural Networks at the Boise Code Camp, 2018. 

2017

• Invited talk for the Interaction Lab at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

• Invited talk at the Dialogue Systems Group seminar, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany. 

• Invited talk at Senior Seminar in the Boise State University Department of Computer Science. 

• Presentation on Natural Language Processing at the Boise Code Camp, 2017. 

• Invited presentation on Data Science at the Python user group meeting at Boise State University. 

2016

• Moved to Boise, Idaho to work as an assistant professor at Boise State University in the Computer Science Department

• Successful Ph.D dissertation defense, committee members: David Schlangen, Philipp Cimiano, and Marcus Kracht. 

• Reviewer for various conferences and grant proposals.

• Talk at CITEC workshop: "From Robotics to Cognitive Interaction and Beyond"

2015

• Invited Talk at SFB Colloquium Series, Stuttgart, Germany.

• Talk at Bielefeld University Linguistics and Literature Department Colloquium.

• Invited talk at CITEC AI Club meeting, Bielefeld, Germany.

• Reviewer for  ESSLLI Student Session, ICMI, SIGDial, EMNLP

2014

• PhD 'Provider' for the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) RISE program.

• Invited Talk at HRI-Europe in Offenbach, Germany

• Reviewer for ICMI+Workshops, Language & Computation ESSLLI Student Session.

2013

• Three-month internship with Honda Research Institute, advised by Kotaro Funakoshi.

• Organizing committee for the Young Researchers' RoundTable on Spoken Dialogue Systems (YRRSDS) which took place in Metz, France in conjunction with SIGdial.

• Reviewer for ICMI+Workshops.

2012

• Talk at the Bielefeld Linguistic Colloquium, Bielefeld, Germany

• Invited talk at the CITEC "Robot Anthropology: Emergent technologies and questions of human sciences" workshop, August 2-3, Bielefeld, Germany.

• Attended the ESSLLI Summer School.