MS in Computational Linguistics

PROTO team members.

Professor Rohini Srihari, Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, with the student members of PROTO, competing for the Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge, against eight selected groups from other universities.

Overview

The Departments of Linguistics and Computer Science and Engineering jointly participate in a Master of Science in Computational Linguistics (Natural Language Processing). The mission of the program is to prepare students for a career in the Human Language Technologies industry. This program is on the STEM OPT extension list (CIP number 30.1801). If you are a current UB Linguistics PhD student interested in pursuing the MS as well, please view the PhD Applicants to MS page. 

MS students are encouraged to seek internships they are interested in via Bullseye, or to participate in our local Summer internship in the Natural Language Understanding Laboratory at the Department of Biomedical Sciences. We also have a relationshiop with Comcast’s Applied AI group as a potential source of Summer internships for our MS students.

There are currently eight students in the MS program, two of which are also pursuing a PhD in Linguistics.

List of (past and current) student achievements

Ideal applicants to the MS have :

  • good letters of recommendation
  • a strong cover letter
  • good grades (including GRE scores)
  • prior training/experience relevant to the MS (e.g. background in linguistics, computer science, and/or mathematics)

Online Application

Advising Faculty

The MS degree also requires the completion of a capstone project (either LIN600, or an expanded version of the project for an advanced CL course), which consists of a significant amount of programming and allows students to specialize in particular techniques, methodos and/or research. The project can be completed at any time during the program and can be advised by any of the following faculty. For a recent example of a project that became a published paper see https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W19-1004/.

Rui P. Chaves, Associate Professor of Linguistics

Rachael Hinkle, Assistant Professor of Political Science

Yingjie Hu, Assistant Professor of Geography

Cassandra Jacobs, Assistant Professor of Linguistics

Jean-Pierre Koenig, Professor of Linguistics

Rohini Srihari, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering

Degree Requirements

Credit Hours: 36           
Required Linguistics Courses                                        
  • Phonetics (LIN 531)
  • Syntax I (LIN 515)
  • Advanced Syntax (such as LIN 526: Comparative Syntactic Theories; LIN 552: Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar; LIN 535: Syntax 2; or LIN 614: Current Syntactic Theory)
  • Semantics I (LIN 538)
  • Semantics II (LIN 543)
Required Computer Science Courses
  • Introduction to Computer Science for non-majors I (CSE 503)
  • Information Retrieval (CSE 535)
  • Machine Learning (CSE 574)
  • Computational Linguistics (LIN/CSE 567)
  • Advanced Topics in Computational Linguistics (LIN/CSE 667) 

Electives*

  • Statistics (such as EAS 502 Introduction to Probability Theory for Data Science, LIN 569: Quantitative Methods in Linguistics;  PSC 508: Basic Statistics for Social Sciences)
  • Fundamentals of Programming Languages (CSE 505)
  • Analysis of Algorithms (CSE 531)
  • Machine Learning (CSE 574)
  • Advanced Machine Learning (CSE 674)
  • Deep Learning (CSE 676)
  • Machine Learning And Society (CSE 540)
  • Reinforcement Learning (CSE 546)
  • NLP and Text Mining (CSE 635)
  • Introduction to pattern recognition (CSE 555)
  • Knowledge Representation (CSE 563)
  • Topics in visualization (CSE 566)
  • Introduction to Computer Vision and Image Processing (CSE 573)
  • Introduction to the Theory of Computation (CSE 596)
  • Data mining and bioinformatics (CSE 601)
  • Discourse pragmatics (LIN 504)
  • Corpus Linguistics (LIN 514)
  • Head-driven Phrase-Structure Grammar (LIN 552)
  • Psycholinguistics (PSY 642)
  • Disorders of Memory (CDS 687)
  • Internship (LIN 599)

*To be chosen in agreement with each student’s advisor; other classes may be taken with approval of the Director of Graduate Studies in the concentration for Computational Linguistics, Professor Rui P. Chaves.

Required courses may be waived if a corresponding course has already been taken. For information on Computer Science courses, please visit the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

Contact Us

Rohini Srihari, PhD

Professor of Computer Science and Engineering; Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

338D Davis Hall

Phone: (716) 645-1602 Ext. 102

Email: rohini@cedar.buffalo.edu