Aidan Pine is a Research Officer at the Canadian National Research Council and Technical Lead for the Speech Generation for Indigenous Language Education project. He is also the founder and lead developer of Mother Tongues, an organization which develops free, open-source language software used by dozens of communities internationally. Aidan received his B.A. Hons. in First Nations Languages & Linguistics from the University of British Columbia and an M.Sc. in Speech and Language Processing from the University of Edinburgh. Aidan is passionate about community-engaged language technology projects that combine his interests in language, linguistics, anti-colonial methodologies, and computer science.
2024 Natural Language Processing
We establish an independent Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) for each Request for Proposals (RFP). TAP members bring strong technical and domain knowledge, and are responsible for identifying data gaps, refining RFPs, and reviewing and selecting proposals for funding. They also outline insights from the funding process and make recommendations for future funding considerations.
Aidan Pine
Canadian National Research Council
About Aidan Pine
Analía Gutiérrez, PhD
National Council for Scientific and Technical Research
About Analía Gutiérrez, PhD
Analía Gutiérrez holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of British Columbia. She works as an adjunct Researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), and as an Adjunct Professor of Historical Linguistics at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, University of Buenos Aires (UBA). Her main research interests focus on language documentation, phonology, acoustic phonetics, phonological typology, and historical linguistics. She has directed several research projects on the phonetic and phonological structures of Nivaĉle and the Mataguayan language family (CONICET, FONCYT-MINCYT, Argentina; Jacobs Research Grant, Whatcom Museum, USA; ELDP, SOAS, UK). She has also participated in numerous documentation and research projects on the indigenous languages of the Gran Chaco region (South America).
Audrey Julia Waleghwa Mbogho
USIU-Africa
About Audrey Julia Waleghwa Mbogho
Audrey Mbogho is Associate professor of Machine Learning and Dean of the School of Science and Technology at USIU-Africa. She is interested in natural language processing, low-resource languages, and in questions of inclusion in computing education, technologies and professions. She has led projects in the development of low resource language corpora, and she is currently studying the low-resource African language technologies ecosystem in collaboration with the LINKS Centre at the University of Witwatersrand. From 2006 to 2014, she was a senior lecturer in computer science at the University of Cape Town where she supervised projects in NLP in low-resource contexts.
Derya Sever, PhD
Data Friendly Space
About Derya Sever, PhD
Derya Sever currently works as the NLP/ML lead at Data Friendly Space working with the NLP team to develop cutting-edge NLP based products and continuous development of NLP features in the open-source DEEP Platform. Previously, experienced in analyzing and enhancing complex processes, especially in healthcare systems of low-middle-income countries. From manufacturing to delivery, she has crafted strategies for adaptive and transformational change to sustain project outcomes at organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and IDA Foundation. In her last role at Pendulum Systems, Derya worked as the technical product lead to develop an AI-based intelligent demand forecasting product for low-middle-income countries . She holds a PhD in Operations Research (Industrial Engineering) from Eindhoven University of Technology (NL).
Dr. Joyce Nakatumba-Nabende
Makerere University
About Dr. Joyce Nakatumba-Nabende
Dr. Joyce Nakatumba-Nabende holds a PhD in Computer Science from Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Makerere University. She heads the Makerere Artificial Intelligence Lab, a research lab in the Department of Computer Science. Her research interests are using Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Responsible AI and their application in health and agriculture. She has served as a Lacuna Fund NLP Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) since 2021.
Felipe Daniel Hasler Sandoval, PhD
Universidad de Chile
About Felipe Daniel Hasler Sandoval, PhD
Felipe Daniel Hasler Sandoval has a PhD in Linguistics from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He is a professor in the Department of Linguistics of the Universidad de Chile. His main lines of research are related to the description of the grammar of Mapudungun from a functional perspective and to the development of areal research in the Andes from a typological perspective. Along with these main lines, he has participated in research related to the description of Chilean sign language from cognitive and functional perspectives; the description of pre-Hispanic relationships between the languages and peoples of the Andes; the analysis of the effects of contact on Spanish and Mapudungun in contact zones and, finally, the description of Spanish from functional and typological perspectives.
Luciana Benotti, PhD
Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina
About Luciana Benotti, PhD
Luciana Benotti received a PhD in Computing from the Université de Lorraine in France for her work on Natural Language Processing (NLP) at the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA). She also has an Erasmus Mundus joint Masters from the University of Bolzano in Italy and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. She served as the chair of the executive board of the Association for Computational Linguistics until January 2024 and is currently a member of the board. He has been an invited professor at the University of Stanford, US; Imperial College, London; INRIA, France; and CIMEC, Italy. She is currently an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina. She works with the NGOs Fundación Vía Libreto investigate NLP technology from a human rights perspective. Her research focuses on the areas of conversational agents, natural language processing, error and bias analysis in language models, and the social impact of artificial intelligence.