is held in the USA and in Canada. High school students in New Jersey can participate at the local competition site at 星空无限传媒 University.

The event consists of two rounds:聽
1) Open Round – January 29, 2026
2) Invitational Round – March 19, 2026

To register, please visit

The website also provides all of the competition rules as well as practice problems for students to review.

Open Round: January 29, 2026

Time
The doors will open at 9:30am. You should plan to be present at the contest room by 9:45. You should be seated by 9:55 when the announcements are read. The contest will start at 10:00 AM sharp, and will end 3 hours later at 1:00 PM.
Location
Cohen Lounge, Dickson Hall 178
星空无限传媒 University

Invitational Round:聽 March 19, 2026,

Time
9am -1pm (please, arrive before 9am)
Location
Center for Computing and Information Science – CCIS424 (NLP Lab)

Parking (for both rounds)
Visitor parking on campus is available at the Red Hawk Parking Garage.
For information on visitor parking, please visit: /facilities/our-services/parking-services/visitor-parking/

Important Information
鈥� Plan to be at the contest room at least 15 mins before the start of the contest (9:45).
鈥� Please bring your own black pen — all solutions must be written in pen. Scratch paper will be provided.
鈥� You are allowed a basic wristwatch (without built-in calculator) for time keeping. However, no electronic device is allowed; phones will need to be powered off during the competition
鈥� Bring water and snacks to keep yourself fresh and energized during the contest. Place them on the desk before the contest begins.
鈥� When you arrive, place your bags under your seats. You cannot use your bags during the contest.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us:

Assistant Professor, Linguistics
Email: barakl@montclair.edu

Anna Feldman, Ph.D.
Professor & Chair, Linguistics
feldmana@montclair.edu

is held in the USA and in Canada. High school students in New Jersey can participate at the local competition site at 星空无限传媒 University.

The event consists of two rounds:聽
1) Open Round – January 23, 2025
2) Invitational Round

To register, please visit

The website also provides all of the competition rules as well as practice problems for students to review.

Open Round: Thursday, January 23, 2025

Time
The doors will open at 9:30am. You should plan to be present at the contest room by 9:45. You should be seated by 9:55 when the announcements are read. The contest will start at 10:00 AM sharp, and will end 3 hours later at 1:00 PM.

Location
Dickson Hall
1st floor, room 178
星空无限传媒 University

Parking
Visitor parking on campus is available at the Red Hawk Parking Garage.
For information on visitor parking, please visit: /facilities/our-services/parking-services/visitor-parking/

Important Information
鈥� Plan to be at the contest room at least 15 mins before the start of the contest (9:45).
鈥� Please bring your own black pen — all solutions must be written in pen. Scratch paper will be provided.
鈥� You are allowed a basic wristwatch (without built-in calculator) for time keeping. However, no electronic device is allowed; phones will need to be powered off during the competition
鈥� Bring water and snacks to keep yourself fresh and energized during the contest. Place them on the desk before the contest begins.
鈥� When you arrive, place your bags under your seats. You cannot use your bags during the contest.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us:

Lauren Covey, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Linguistics
coveyl@montclair.edu

Anna Feldman, Ph.D.
Professor & Chair, Linguistics
feldmana@montclair.edu

It explores the nature of major language contact phenomena, especially lexical borrowing, mixed languages, bilingual lexical and grammatical processing and representations, second language acquisition, codeswitching, and interlanguage.

Dr. Wei鈥檚 research interests include contact linguistics, the bilingual mental lexicon, codeswitching, interlanguage, second language acquisition, and literary stylistics.

Learn more about or his current research here.

Dr. Williams, in collaboration with the Indonesian colleagues, will create video recordings of language use, focusing on everyday talk and interaction, which they will transcribe and translate to create an initial corpus of the language. The research team will also record some other materials, depending on the needs and interests of the community members.

Dr. Williams hopes to create a preliminary dictionary and other materials for the community in the future. This is an initial project that aims to get better information on Benggoi, its grammar and endangerment status. Dr. Williams will travel to Seram in July-August 2024 and likely return in July 2025.

Adjunct ASL professor Jessica Wohlstetter is the instructor for this amazing program. Over the next 8 weeks, this cohort will immerse themselves into the world of ASL interpreting as they work towards obtaining certification.

See more from NYPD Equity and Inclusion .

What are VERY popular words among cult leaders? Why do some people learn a second language faster than others? How do babies learn to speak? How many languages does AI know? Tune in to find out!

In this episode, a panel of linguists from 星空无限传媒 University discusses their diverse research areas and the intersection of linguistics with AI and computer science. They delve into topics such as accents, phrasing, second language acquisition, and the use of emojis in different cultures. They share their backgrounds and how they became interested in their respective fields. We learn the importance of understanding individual differences in language learning and the need for collaborative and respectful approaches in language documentation. This is a conversation you don鈥檛 want to miss!

Unveiling the Complexity of Language

Computational Linguistics: Bridging Language and Technology
shares her journey from a background in languages and linguistics to her current focus on computational linguistics and natural language processing. She highlights the practical applications of linguistic knowledge in AI and computer science.

Exploring the Melodies of Speech: Prosody and American Dialects
delves into the field of prosody, which encompasses intonation, rhythm, and stress in speech. He discusses how prosody plays a crucial role in conveying meaning and explores the variations in American dialects.

Unlocking the Secrets of Language Acquisition
sheds light on the complexities of second language acquisition. She investigates individual differences in language learning and explores the cognitive factors that influence language acquisition.

Decoding the Language of Writing
focuses on college writing, examining the differences between native and non-native speakers. She explores how writing styles vary across different contexts and cultures.

Computational Modeling of Language Acquisition
Libby Barak discusses her work in computational modeling of language acquisition, both for first language and second language learners. She explores how computational tools can aid in understanding language learning processes.

Documenting Endangered Languages
shares his research on documenting endangered languages, emphasizing the importance of preserving linguistic diversity. He discusses the role of computational tools in collecting and processing language data.

is held in the USA and in Canada. High school students in New Jersey can participate at the local competition site at 星空无限传媒 University.

The event consists of two rounds:聽
1) Open Round – January 25, 2024
2) Invitational Round – March 14, 2024

To register, please visit

The website also provides all of the competition rules as well as practice problems for students to review.

Open Round: January 25, 2024

Time
The doors will open at 9:30am. You should plan to be present at the contest room by 9:45. You should be seated by 9:55 when the announcements are read. The contest will start at 10:00 AM sharp, and will end 3 hours later at 1:00 PM.

Location
Dickson Hall
1st floor, room 178
星空无限传媒 University

Parking
Visitor parking on campus is available at the Red Hawk Parking Garage.
For information on visitor parking, please visit: /facilities/our-services/parking-services/visitor-parking/

Important Information
鈥⒙� Plan to be at the contest room at least 15 mins before the start of the contest (9:45).
鈥⒙� Please bring your own black pen — all solutions must be written in pen. Scratch paper will be provided.
鈥⒙� You are allowed a basic wristwatch (without built-in calculator) for time keeping. However, no electronic device is 鈥� allowed; phones will need to be powered off during the competition.
鈥⒙� Bring water and snacks to keep yourself fresh and energized during the contest. Place them on the desk before the contest begins.
鈥⒙� When you arrive, place your bags under your seats. You cannot use your bags during the contest.

Top scorers in the Open Round in January will be eligible to compete in an Invitational Round on March 14, 2024. You should be able to view your Open Round score + Invitational Round qualification status on around March 1, 2024.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us:

Lauren Covey, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Linguistics
coveyl@montclair.edu

Jonathan Howell, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Linguistics
howellj@montclair.edu

Anna Feldman, Ph.D.
Professor & Chair, Linguistics
feldmana@montclair.edu

Abstract:

English speakers constantly and effortlessly use prosody, such as accent and phrasing, to communicate beyond the meaning of individual words. Yet our understanding of prosody, and its integration in speech technologies, have lagged behind, particularly so for language varieties that are already underrepresented. While millions of Americans speak African American English (AAE) or Latinx English (LE), these language varieties remain underrepresented in basic and applied research, with negative consequences for speech therapy, education, criminal justice, and employment. This research will result in a corpus of AAE, LE and European American English speech data annotated for prosody, which will be used to improve our scientific understanding of prosody and to create tools for automatic detection of accent and phrase boundaries. A team of 7 students from diverse backgrounds will receive training that will provide a gateway to careers in language and technology.

The corpus will include pairs of same-dialect speakers recorded in a map task, a method used to elicit spontaneous, naturalistic speech. The data will be transcribed using automatic speech recognition and hand correction, and automatically segmented into words and individual sounds using forced alignment software. Both trained and untrained coders will annotate the data for sentence accent and boundary using Rapid Prosody Transcription, an established method designed for fast, intuitive prosodic annotation by non-experts. Acoustic information, including duration, pitch, and intensity, will be extracted and used with the annotations to train a machine learning detection model, and to test previous findings about the frequency, distribution, acoustics and perception of accent and boundary in the three English language varieties.

Thursday, May 4, 3:45 – 5:00pm
Schmitt Hall, room 104
or, join us via Zoom:

In the fall of 2022, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) introduced a year-long internship program for M.S. Computational Linguistics graduate students at 星空无限传媒 University. The internship aims for students to work with ETS employees on projects relating to natural language processing, specifically test and Automatic Item Generation (AIG) development. This presentation, delivered by ETS Interns Kelly Ortega and Zachary Schultz, will examine and explain some of the tasks performed throughout the internship in the frame of Automatic Item Generation. Projects to be discussed include passage development, item writing, article extraction and parsing, and more.

Student presenters:

• Kelly Ortega is an M.S. Computational Linguistics student graduating in May 2023. As she looks forward to joining the workforce, she sees the many ways ETS has prepared her for the tech industry through hands-on research. She appreciates her ETS internship experience emphasizing a linguistic and technical background. She is excited to present what she has learned with her fellow students and the faculty at MSU.
• Zachary Schultz is an M.S. in Computational Linguistics student graduating this May. He is a previous pharmacy student who decided to pursue his passions of language and technology. His time at 星空无限传媒 University has been invaluable in helping him to learn and grow in this field and his time as an intern with ETS has only amplified this. He is looking forward to sharing what he has done during this internship, as well as what new knowledge and competencies he has gained.

ETS mentors:

• Dr. Lin Gu is a Senior Research Scientist in the Center for Language Education and Assessment Research. Lin has broad training in the areas of language pedagogy, language testing, and educational measurement. She received her Ph.D. degree in Second Language Acquisition from the University of Iowa. Since joining ETS, Lin has focused her research on validity issues in assessing English language learners, technology-enhanced language assessments, and the use of AI in learning and assessment contexts. She has led multiple-year research projects, developing and evaluating automated feedback on speaking performance. Working with cross-functional teams, Lin has developed AI-augmented educational solutions that are well-grounded in language learning principles and measurement science. In addition to language learning and assessment, Lin was also a key player contributing to ETS鈥� research agenda in assessing high education learning outcomes in an international context. Lin has published in a variety of journals, including Language Testing, Language Assessment Quarterly, English for Academic Purposes, Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, and Nature Human Behaviour.
• Dr. Michael Flor is a Senior Research Scientist in the Center for Learning and Assessment Foundations, in the R&D Division of the Educational Testing Service (ETS). Michael is a computational linguist. He earned a PhD in cognitive psychology with specialization in psycholinguistics from Tel Aviv University, Israel. He joined ETS in 2005. His research focuses on automatic processing of text data for education, combining linguistic, statistical, and cognitive approaches. His work spans both published research and development of applied systems. His work included automatic spelling correction for student essays, automated estimation of text complexity, figurative language detection, measuring lexical cohesion in text, automatic scoring of essays, and automatic question generation. His current research interests include idiomatic expressions and automatic item generation (AIG).

It鈥檚 all in a day鈥檚 work for Besaleli, a founding NLP research scientist at , which recently landed $7.5 million in pre-seed and seed funding, according to a company press release. Besaleli estimates that on a weekly basis, she puts in 60 hours at her job and 20 at Montclair. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 get much sleep but that鈥檚 OK, I鈥檓 doing what I love,鈥� she says.

Seek AI, Besaleli says, provides 鈥渁 natural language interface for a company鈥檚 data. The idea is that you should be able to ask any question that you want, in natural language, and it will pull the data for you from your databases. The motivation behind this is that companies often have to either hire a lot of data analysts to just write this code called structured query language or SQL to pull this data from what are often very messy databases.鈥�

鈥淭hey often find a lot of the time consumed writing something that we believe could be automated,鈥� Besaleli says. 鈥淪o, at the core of it, we are building code-generation models that will be able to generate code, given natural language that will interact with your database for you. We鈥檙e streamlining the process of finding answers at a company and streamlining the way that it鈥檚 done.鈥�

Results, she says, could be complete in minutes versus days. Still, Besaleli says, Seek AI鈥檚 objective is not to replace data analysts. 鈥淥ur goal is to make their jobs easier so that they can do more meaningful work,鈥� she says.

Besaleli adds that 鈥淭he generative AI space is very, very new. Even six months ago, we didn鈥檛 have the capacity to do what we鈥檙e doing now. It鈥檚 a very, very rapidly growing field.鈥�

Already, the SoHo-based Seek AI has more than a dozen pilots with tech, fintech and consumer brands customers ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies. Seek AI will use the funding infusion to 鈥渁ccelerate product development and support its mission of making data accessible to anyone in an organization via a natural language interface,鈥� the press release states.

As a co-founder, Besaleli played a role in obtaining that funding. 鈥淩az would do investor pitches with me and speak about the underlying technology behind Seek,鈥� says Seek AI Founder and CEO Sarah Nagy.

Nagy says she had no qualms about Besaleli still being a graduate student when they started working together. 鈥淚 was really impressed by Raz鈥檚 background in linguistics, combined with her technical chops working with transformer models in PyTorch [an open source machine-learning framework that accelerates research prototyping to production deployment]. She also had co-founded a startup before, in the aerospace industry, which was incredibly impressive. On top of all that, she had a great attitude: eager to learn, get her hands dirty, and work hard to build Seek. Once I had known her for a few weeks, I knew I had to get her in the boat.鈥�

At the time she and Besaleli met, Nagy says, 鈥淚 had built a very small prototype of an AI model and was facing the challenge of scaling the model and getting it to work with real-world data. Raz came up with several innovations that solved these challenges and helped propel Seek to be the leader in our space.鈥�

While ChatGPT has entered the artificial intelligence lexicon thanks to tons of media attention, Besaleli says there鈥檚 a big difference between that tool and the capabilities of Seek AI. 鈥淲e use a model like ChatGPT in our systems, but the scope of our systems are much, much larger. ChatGPT is just a model, and it can generate SQL but from a very, very limited scope,鈥� she says, adding, 鈥淲hat we do is a little different because we鈥檙e also a repository, a centralized location for all the questions that that business asks. We鈥檙e very much focused on information retrieval, not just generating code.鈥�

Linguistics and Computer Science Professor Anna Feldman, who chairs the Linguistics department, was a key factor in Raz Besaleli choosing to enroll in the Computational Linguistics master鈥檚 program at Montclair.

Besaleli is already an expert on the subject. She recently was the only student alongside three Montclair professors on the faculty panel 鈥溾�� at the Feliciano School of Business. She sat alongside her research advisor and Computer Science Professor Jing Peng, Linguistics department chair and Computer Science Professor Anna Feldman, and Writing Studies Associate Professor Ronald Brooks Jr.

When Besaleli was weighing her options about which school to attend, the Annapolis, Maryland, native looked at universities in the U.S., as well as the University of Reykjavik in Iceland. Ultimately, she chose to study at Montclair largely because of Feldman. 鈥淚 was interested in her research, and we just got along really well.鈥� Besaleli adds that affordability also was a factor in her decision.

Feldman says she was unaware that she played a role in Besaleli鈥檚 choosing to attend graduate school in New Jersey. 鈥淏ut I鈥檓 happy Raz joined our program,鈥� she says. 鈥淲e really enjoy having her at Montclair.鈥�

Montclair is one of the few universities in the country that offer a Master of Science in Computational Linguistics 鈥� and the only university in New Jersey. 鈥淚t鈥檚 also special because it鈥檚 truly interdisciplinary, housed in both Linguistics and Computer Science, and gives our students a strong background in both computer science and linguistics,鈥� says Feldman.

Besaleli, Feldman adds, is an excellent student. 鈥淪he never takes any facts for granted; she always wants to challenge ideas and verify claims. She worked with me on a project trying to discover historical semantic shifts in Modern Hebrew and discovered very interesting patterns,鈥� she says.

Computer Science Professor Jing Peng (center) seen here at the Natural Language Processing Lab, serves as Raz Besaleli鈥檚 research advisor.

With the guidance of Peng, Feldman says Besaleli is 鈥渆xploring how large language models can translate SQL queries into plain English. [SQL is a domain-specific language used for managing data held in relational databases, and SQL queries have a specific structure.] Raz would like to find out whether generating an SQL query from a text description requires a lot more context than the other way around.鈥�

As for the future, Besaleli expects to graduate in May 鈥渋f everything works out and if I have time to write my final projects,鈥� she says, laughing. She certainly doesn鈥檛 have to worry about the job market, and she鈥檒l be able to devote her attention to Seek AI.

鈥淚 see this revolutionizing the way that people interact with their databases,鈥� she says, 鈥渁nd I hope that we can just make life as easy as possible for those in the data space, so that they can do the things that are important and that they want to do.鈥�

Raz Besaleli (second from left) participates in the Natural Language Processing Lab with other students as Linguistics department chair and Computer Science Professor Anna Feldman looks on.

Feldman says the Seek AI platform 鈥渋s a great product that uses sophisticated natural language processing techniques and machine learning to allow users to use natural language commands to query databases鈥�. As for Raz鈥檚 future, life is an adventure, and I hope Raz will continue building AI applications for social good.鈥�

Meanwhile, Nagy is looking forward to navigating Seek AI鈥檚 future alongside her co-founder. 鈥淩az is, by many accounts, a genius,鈥� says Nagy, 鈥渁nd I am excited to continue to work with her.鈥�

Story by Staff Writer Sylvia A. Martinez. Photos by John J. LaRosa.

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