I work in Computational Linguistics, a research area that belongs to both Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science. My main area of expertise is Natural Language Generation (NLG). Examples are computer programs that

• analyse a photograph to produce a textual description (e.g. "A scene at the beach, in which a dog chases a ball"), or
• analyse weather data to produce a textual weather description (e.g., "A largely sunny day, with occasional showers"), or
• manipulate a mathematical or logical formula to produce an explanation of the formula in Dutch or English.

I take an interest in logical issues arising from this work. Also, I often collaborate with linguists and psychologists. Together we make computer models of the way speakers refer to objects, for example, trying to figure out what's the most effective way to do this in different situations. My colleagues and I have recently started a line of work in which we look specifically at the challenges to NLG posed by Mandarin.

For more information, see Research. Here is a list of Master and/or Bachelor Thesis projects that I'd be keen to supervise.

Some further information may still be obtained from my web site at the University of Aberdeen.