Lisa Ballesteros's Homepage

Contact Information:

Office: 200 Clapp
Phone: (413) 538-2421
Fax: (413) 538-3431
Email: lballest@mtholyoke.edu

Office Hours:

T 3:30-4:30

Th 10-11

F 9:30-11:00

Or by appointment

Spring Advising Calendar

Classes

I came to Mount Holyoke from the Computer Science Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. My dissertation work was done with Bruce Croft at the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval

Research

My research is in the area of Cross-language Information Retrieval. These are systems that allow a person to query in one language (e.g. English) and retrieve relevant documents in other languages (e.g. Spanish). In my thesis research I developed very effective approach to cross-language retrieval based on translation via machine readable dictionary, augmented with statistical techniques for reducing the effects of translation ambiguity. The statistical techniques are based on analysis of word co-occurrence in text. Publications on my research on cross-language retrieval can be found here.

Other Research Interests

Much of my research experience has been in information retrieval, but I have a diverse research background. I have also worked with Paul Cohen on applying AI techniques to exploratory data analysis and causal induction. In addition, I spent a few years doing basic research in Molecular and Cellular Biology. My research interests span a broad spectrum of information access and knowledge management issues. As the amount of on-line information continues to explode, there is an increasing need for systems that facilitate the manipulation and analysis of information. I am particularly interested in developing techniques for text analysis and in exploring the ways in which these techniques can be used for other data types. Areas of interest include the following:

question answering

extraction

geographic information retrieval

Automatic Image Annotation

Student Research

Publications

Useful Links