Natural Language Processing
Natural Language Processing at RIT
Natural language processing (NLP) and speech processing at RIT is a research-active area led by Dr. Cecilia Alm’s and Dr. Marcos Zampieri’s laboratories. The groups’ research projects, supported by external or internal awards, provide graduate and undergraduate students with mentored experiential learning opportunities.
NLP at RIT's curricular offerings include natural language processing and speech processing coursework for graduate and advanced undergraduate students. We welcome students and collaborators who are curious about natural language, artificial intelligence, and human cognition and who bring a passion for advancing science and technology.
Dr. Alm is PI for the NSF-funded REU Site Computational Sensing for Human-centered AI.
Research Labs and Facilities
The Computational Linguistics and Speech Processing (CLaSP) lab at RIT is dedicated to advancing applied and theoretical research involving text, speech, dialogue, and multimodal data. Research in Alm’s lab includes projects focused on intelligent affective computing, humans’ roles in AI such as in interactive machine learning, language/multimodal sensing and systems that make inference from and support multimodal dialogue interactions.
Members of the Language Technology Group work on various topics in computational linguistics and natural language processing. We are interested in collecting, processing, and analyzing large collections of texts from different domains (e.g. news, social media) written in various languages and dialects.
Current foci and recent projects in the group include language acquisition, readability, and educational applications; language variation and automatic language identification; user interaction in social media; and machine translation.
Research
National Science Foundation
Amount: 376,744
National Science Foundation
Amount: $1,332,069 (Subaward)
National Science Foundation
Amount: 149,778
National Science Foundation
Amount: 24,000
National Science Foundation
Amount: 435,271
National Science Foundation
Amount: 170,130
National Science Foundation
Amount: 23,968
National Science Foundation
Amount: $4,188
National Science Foundation
Amount: $1,994,676
STINT
Amount: 139,000 SEK, MAU, T. Pederson PI
National Science Foundation
Amount: $379,927, incl. $20,000 supplement.
Latest News
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July 16, 2026
Undergrads from colleges across the U.S. come to RIT for summer research
RIT is hosting four Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) program sites this summer, which are designed for students to develop a passion for research and receive guidance for pursuing graduate careers. The university has a longstanding history hosting REU sites, which are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation.
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November 24, 2025
RIT partners with Gallaudet University to launch research traineeship program in Universal AI
RIT is teaming up with Gallaudet University to prepare the next generation of artificial intelligence researchers and practitioners who will develop AI for everyone.
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November 4, 2025
Undergraduates nationwide to explore human-centered AI at RIT
Over the next three years, the Research Experience for Undergraduates Site in Computational Sensing for Human-centered AI will welcome nine undergraduate students each summer to RIT’s campus. The site is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
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July 21, 2026
Bone, Parth, and Alm publish paper on Cognitive Load in Interactive Machine Learning
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July 1, 2026
Nau, et al publish Fairness Without Discrimination: Individually Fair Outcomes in the Kidney Exchange Problem
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June 29, 2026
Alm presents at American Society for Engineering Education conference
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June 18, 2026
Titung and Alm publish in IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing