About

I am a recent graduate of the University of Arizona’s Human Language Technology MS program. In 2023 I graduated Magna cum Laude from the University of Arizona with a BA in Linguistics and a minor in Computer Science.

Why Linguistics

When I went back to school in 2019, I chose to study Linguistics to continue pursuing a lifelong interest in language. As a writer and performer, I had invested so much time in what language can do and felt driven to understand how language does what it does.

At the U of A, I studied Syntax, Semantics, Phonology, Phonetics, Language Revitalization, and Computational Linguistics. I was drawn to Semantics and Pragmatics the most. The mathematical elements of the discipline were very interesting to me, and I took a lot of joy in learning about Quantifier Scope and Table Models of Discourse. I was fortunate enough to spend a great deal of time in lectures with Dr. Robert Henderson, and many more reading whatever he told me to.

Why NLP

Since I was already studying Computer Science and the U of A offered an Accelerated Master’s in HLT, it made too much sense to go into NLP. I love problem solving and I love language so the field is a perfect dovetail of my interests.

Since joining the program I’ve enjoyed putting my Linguistic background to work in a mechanical way. I’ve been able to use my understanding of Semantics to get my head around Word Embeddings and my syntax knowledge has proved useful over and over again.

I’ve been lucky to work with some great professors on side projects as well, working on Authorship Verification projects with Dr. Gus Hahn Powell, and on some simple Uspanteko Corpus manipulation with Dr. Robert Henderson.

I recently completed an internship with LUM AI working in ODIN-based Information Extraction on technical and contract documents, which was an exciting challenge that ended up involving some Machine Learning as well.

I’m interested in growing my skills in Generative NLP, RAG, and Data Science.

If I’m not working or spending time with my family, you can usually find me at Rocks and Ropes or on Mt. Lemmon being a pretty okay climber.