Brand new Computational Linguistics Society hosts its first event
Students had the opportunity to hear from researchers on the area and participate in a workshop.
On January 28 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., the newly founded University of Toronto (U of T) Mississauga (UTM) Computational Linguistic Society (UTMCLS) hosted its inaugural event in MN 3280. The launch party included presentations from master and PhD students, a collaborative workshop, and breaks for the attendees to converse and enjoy free food.
From 2:10 p.m. until 3 p.m., panelists Liam McFadden, a former UTM undergraduate currently pursuing a masters in linguistics at U of T St. George, and Jai Aggarwal, currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at also St. George, presented their fields of research.
From aerial linguistics, language contact, speech perception and the correlation between borders and languages, to how cognition constrains the structure of language and how this same structure changes over time, the panelists explained in rich detail how they relate linguistics to computation. After each panel the attendees had the opportunity to ask McFadden and Aggarwal about their research experiences.
After the presentations, UTMCLS executives facilitated a workshop in which students worked together to solve a hypothetical problem. A cat was found in a box speaking the fictional language “Meowian” along with a buggy translator supposed to decipher what the cat was saying. The attendees’ task was to fix the code and translate the message.
Students paired up in groups to work together on the code, they also counted with the help of the event’s organizers who stayed ready to assist them during the whole activity. After solving what they called a “challenging task,” the attendees were able to fix the malfunctioning translator, discovering what the message said: “Eat cheese, cheese is the best food, a cat without cheese is very sad. Do you have cheese?”
At the end of the event, UTMCLS President Habbie Dem took a few minutes to speak to The Medium about the founding of her club. When questioned about the reason behind the club’s creation, she said, “Last year I kept thinking to myself, ‘I want to make a club,’ and then this summer I happened to look up computational linguistics in the SOP [Student Organization Portal] list, and I found out that there’s already a club at St. George.”
Dem decided to bring this club to UTM as well, so she emailed a professor asking for guidance on creating the club. “So then we announced [it to] the class, and some of my classmates decided to join, and it all snowballed from there,” she said.
Dem also shared her satisfaction with the launch party’s outcome. “Yeah, it was really fun. I didn’t really know what to expect because this is the first event I’ve ever done, but yeah, I’m happy!”
Habbie affirmed that the club will be back with more events in the future. One of them is on February 5 at MN3180, a General Meeting where students will have the opportunity to vote on the club’s constitution that needs to be amended. For more information about the club and its future events, students can follow the @UTMCLS Instagram page.
