Natural language processing (NLP) in Artificial Intelligence (AI): a functional linguistic perspective
Panesar, K (2020) The Age of Artificial Intelligence: An Exploration. In Steven S. Gouveia editor(s) Vernon Press.
Dr
Kulvinder Panesar was initially appointed as Lecturer to strengthen
the Applied Artificial Intelligence programme team and related teaching and
research activities. In August 2022, she was appointed to Assistant Professor of Applied Artificial Intelligence and has been involved in Natural Language Processing (NLP) Data Scientist related activities.
Her teaching interests are in the branches of AI more specifically NLP (statistical and linguistic - (semantic)), AI project design and development with project management, computer vision (object detection), data mining, analytics (databases to AI), multidisciplinary issues, innovations and ethics, intelligent agents, knowledge representation and employability/placement input.
She has other roles such as Programme Lead of BSc (Hons) Applied AI, and Outreach, Marketing
and Placement Lead of the Department of Media Design and Technology and academic reviewer. She is also involved in cross faculty research projects and external university collaborative
projects. Her current research project is motivated by the grand challenges of healthcare, with the pre-screening of dementia via an intervention in the form of a conversational agent hybridisation solution with a person-centred design with a submitted application (ongoing review) with UKRI (EPRSC).
Kulvinder worked
previously as a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at York St University. She has been an academic for over twenty
years, and a strategically focused senior computing professional wearing different
hats including programmer, research scientist, computational linguistic, software
and website developer, database designer and developer, systems analyst,
project manager and technical consultant.
Her PhD was titled ‘a linguistically
centred text-based conversational software Agent’. Her research interest is NLP
(Natural Language Processing) in AI (Artificial Intelligence), meaning and
knowledge representation (KR), conversational software agents (CSAs) and more recently conversational
AI.
Kulvinder is a MBCS member of the British Computer Society. STEM ambassador, and an AI ambassador and Ethics Adviser for AI Tech North and WeAreTechWomen100 - 2019 winner listed awarded by J P Morgan.
Dr Kulvinder's research
interest is Natural Language Processing (NLP) in AI (Artificial Intelligence),
and meaning and knowledge representation (KR) in conversational software agents
(CSAs) and conversational AI.
This
research area is multi-disciplinary spanning AI, data
science, agent thinking, linguistics, computational linguistics, NLP, KR, and
the Semantic Web. She has conceptually designed and developed a linguistically text based conversational
software agent (LING-CSA) framework, addressing the integration, intersection,
and interface of language, knowledge, and speech act constructions (SAC). LING-CSA is a Java based prototype developed
in Eclipse.
Her research contributions
included: (i) extending the theoretical and computational adequacy of the
linguistic theory - Role and Reference Grammar (RRG); (ii) integrating the RRG
language model with concept of speech
act constructions (SAC) as the linguistic engine; (iii) motivating an agent
framework intersecting with the linguistic engine, an agent cognitive and dialogue model to
facilitate conversation implemented as a proof-of-concept; (4) insights into
the language/knowledge representation interface.
Current research interest involves demystifying statistical vs lingustic NLP for conversational software agents, with the goal to investigating linguistic NLP with statistical NLP learning and support – for s forward-thinking hybrid approach to conversational AI. To explore and apply this research the healthcare domain is selected. Here the focus on language and cognition in mild cognitive impairment and patients living with dementia is to be explored based on a language phenomenon and further explored for automation as an intervention embeded into a conversational agent with automatic speech recognition.
Teaching related:
Panesar, K (2020) The Age of Artificial Intelligence: An Exploration. In Steven S. Gouveia editor(s) Vernon Press.
Panesar, K (2018) Perspectives on the construction of meaning and knowledge: The linguistic, pragmatic, ontological and computational dimensions . In Brian Nolan and Elke Diedrichsen editor(s) Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Panesar, K (2019) AdvanceHE STEM Teaching & Learning Conference 2019. AdvanceHE.
Panesar, K (2018) KMR2018 – 7th International Conference on Meaning and Knowledge Representation.
Panesar, K (2018) KMR2018 – 7th International Conference on Meaning and Knowledge Representation. FungramKB.com.
Panesar, K (2020) Journal of Computer-Assisted Linguistic Research. 4
Panesar, K (2019) Journal of Computer-Assisted Linguistic Research. 3