Featured Faculty: Hal Daumé III – Perotto Professor

Hal Daumé III is a Perotto Professor of Computer Science and Language Science at the University of Maryland, College Park with a joint appointment as a Senior Principal Research at Microsoft Research in New York City. He conducts research in the fields of natural language processing and machine learning, with an emphasis on interactive systems and approaches to understanding and minimize social harms of technology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 2006.

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR RESEARCH?

40% of my research time is spent working on understanding how to build machine-learning-based systems—particularly ones that involve language—that provide useful tools for people to solve tasks. 40% is working on understanding the social implications of natural language processing and machine learning technology, and developing tools to model and minimize potential harms. 10% is trying to do both at the same time, and 10% is random other things I get excited about.

WHAT’S SOMETHING YOU ENJOY ABOUT DOING RESEARCH WITH STUDENTS OR SOMETHING YOU LOOK FOR WHEN PICKING NEW STUDENTS TO WORK ON YOUR PROJECTS?

I really enjoy working with students who have different backgrounds from me so that we can learn from each other.

WHAT IS ONE THING YOU LOVE ABOUT THE HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION LAB?

The people and the breadth of topics (ok that’s two correlated things)!