ROHIT KUMAR Language Technologies Institute School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891 Phone (Office): (412) 268-1482 Fax: (412) 268-6298 Email: rohitk@cs.cmu.edu Web: www.rohitkumar.net RESEARCH INTERESTS Development methodology and Authoring tools for Spoken Language Interfaces (such as Dialog Systems, Tutorial Dialog Systems, Speech based interfaces for the Web) EDUCATION Master in Language Technologies: July 2005 – June 2007 (Expected) Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Advisor: Dr. Carolyn P. Rosι • Current cumulative QPA: 3.82 (till Spring 2006) Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science and Engineering major): August 1999 – May 2003 Punjab Engineering College, Punjab University, Chandigarh, India • First Division with Honors • Aggregate Percentage: 71.36 % (7136 Marks out of 10000) RESEARCH EXPERIENCE Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University (1 year+) Graduate Research Assistant: July 2005 – Present • Working on research and development of the following systems o CycleTalk: Tutorial Dialogue in an Exploratory Learning Environment o ConQuest: Developing a re-useable dialog system template for conferences http://www.conquest-dialog.org/ Advised by: Dr. Alexander Rudnicky • Member of software development team for TuTalk and TagHelper projects Language Technologies Research Center, IIIT Hyderabad, India (2 years) Research Scientist: July 2004 – June 2005 Research Engineer: July 2003 – June 2004 • Worked on research and development on the following projects o Developed natural sounding Text to Speech systems (TTS) for 2 Indian Languages o Reading Aid for Visually Impaired (RAVI) o Automatic Speech Recognition Systems for 3 Indian Languages Created data collection tools and infrastructure (in collaboration with HP Labs India) o Limited domain Speech to Speech Translation system for tourists o Tourist Guide and Talking Dictionary: Applications for Simputer (handheld computer) AWARDS AND RECOGNITION IEEE Computer Society Richard E. Merwin Student Scholarship 2003 • Among the four students selected world over by IEEE Computer Society for demonstration of outstanding involvement in an IEEE activities, excellence in academic achievement and promise in future effort Medal for Best Undergraduate Project • Recipient of the medal for Best Undergraduate Project in Department of Computer Science and Engineering (Class of 2003), awarded the same at the 33rd Annual College Convocation PUBLICATIONS Journals • CycleTalk: Data Driven Design of Support for Simulation Based Learning, (Carolyn Rose, Rohit Kumar, Vincent Aleven, Allen Robinson, Chih Wu), International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education Special Issue on The Best of ITS '04, Vol. 16, 2006, pp. 195 • Implementing a Natural Language Conversational Interface for Indian Language Computing, (Rahul Jindal, Rohit Kumar, Ritvik Sahajpal, Sanjeev Sofat, Shailendra Singh), IETE Journal of Technical Review, Vol. 21, Number 4, July - Aug 2004, pp. 243 Conference Papers • Hydrangea: A Hybrid Ontology Directed Feedback Generation Algorithm for Supporting Creative Problem Solving Dialogues, (Hao-Chuan Wang, Rohit Kumar, Carolyn Rose, Tsai-Yen Li, Chun-Yen Chang), accepted at International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), January 2007, Hyderabad, India • Identification of Confusion and Surprise in Spoken Dialog using Prosodic Features, (Rohit Kumar, Carolyn Rose, Diane Litman), International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (Interspeech) 2006, Pittsburgh • Generating Time-Constrained Audio Presentations of Structured Information, (Brian Langner, Rohit Kumar, Arthur Chan, Lingyun Gu, Alan Black), International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (Interspeech) 2006, Pittsburgh • Evaluating the Effectiveness of Tutorial Dialogue in an Exploratory Learning Context, (Rohit Kumar, Carolyn Rose, Vincent Aleven, Ana Iglesias, Allen Robinson), 8th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) 2006, Taipei, Taiwan o Nominated for Best Paper Award at ITS 2006 • Development of Indian Language Speech Databases for Large Vocabulary Speech Recognition Systems, (Gopalakrishna A., Rahul Chitturi, Sachin Joshi, Rohit Kumar, Satinder Pal Singh, R. N. V. Sitaram, S. P. Kishore), 10th International Conference on Speech and Computer (SPECOM), October 2005, Patras, Greece • Rapid methods for Optimal Text Selection, (Rahul Chitturi, Sebsibe H/Mariam, Rohit Kumar), Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing, September 2005, Borovets, Bulgaria • Automatic Pruning of Unit Selection Speech Databases for Synthesis without Loss of Naturalness, (Rohit Kumar, S. P. Kishore), International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (Interspeech - ICSLP), October 2004, Jeju Korea • Genetic Algorithm for Unit Selection based Speech Synthesis, (Rohit Kumar), International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (Interspeech - ICSLP), October 2004, Jeju Kore • Unit Selection Voice for Amharic using Festvox, (Sebsibe H/Mariam, S. P. Kishore, Alan W. Black, Rohit Kumar, Rajeev Sangal), 5th ISCA Speech Synthesis Workshop (SSW5), June 2004, Pittsburgh • Building Non – Native Pronunciation Lexicon for English using a Rule based Approach, (Rohit Kumar, Amit Kataria, Sanjeev Sofat), International Conference on Natural Language Processing (ICON), December 2003, Mysore, India • Samachaar Vaani: A Framework for providing Automated Spoken News Service, (Rohit Kumar, Anuj Singla, Sanjeev Sofat), Sixth International Conference on Information Technology (CIT), December 2003, Bhubaneswar, India • Experiments with Unit Selection Speech Databases for Indian Languages, (S. P. Kishore, Alan W. Black, Rohit Kumar, Rajeev Sangal), National Seminar on Language Technology Tools: Implementation of Telugu (LTT-IT), October 2003, Hyderabad, India • A Data-Driven Synthesis Approach for Indian Languages using Syllable as Basic Unit, (S. P. Kishore, Rohit Kumar, Rajeev Sangal), International Conference on Natural Language Processing (ICON), December 2002, Mumbai, India OTHER RELEVANT PROJECTS • Deepti http://deepti.rohitkumar.net/ Indian Language Conversational Interface • Khabrein http://ltrc.iiit.ac.in/~rohit/ Speech Interface to the Latest Hindi news RELEVANT GRADUATE COURSEWORK • Graduate Seminar on Dialog Processing (Alex Rudnicky) • Speech Recognition and Understanding (Tanja Schultz) • Dialogue Project Lab (Alex Rudnicky & Alan Black) • Affective Dialog Systems (Diane Litman) • Language and Statistics (Roni Rosenfeld) • Conversational Interfaces (Carolyn Rosι) • Machine Learning (Roni Rosenfeld) TECHNICAL SKILLS • Programming Languages: C, C++, Visual C++, Java, VoiceXML, Shell scripts (sh/bash) • Web Technologies: HTML, ASP, PHP, Python, Perl, Wiki-based content management • Software and Libraries: Microsoft Office, Ravenclaw, Weka, MiniTab, Cognitive Tutor Authoring Tools, Festival, Sphinx 2/3, CMU Language Modeling toolkit • Administration Experience: IIS, Apache, CVS, Bugzilla, OpenSSH, MySQL • Operating Systems: Windows, Linux • Special Purpose Hardware: Intel Dialogic Telephony boards, Smart Card readers, Simputer • Experience in dealing with issues involving Indian Language computing PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS AND ACTIVITIES Indian Graduate Student Association (IGSA), CMU • Selected General Secretary of IGSA, CMU since October 2005 • Instrumental in getting IGSA recognized by Joint funding committee of CMU, resulting in IGSA becoming an official funded organization • Led event management of 4 major socio-cultural events. Each event was attended by 70-100 people. • Organized temporary accommodation arrangements for new students from India for 2 years • Established & implemented policies to facilitate functioning of IGSA Reviewer • 5th International Conference on Natural Language Processing, Hyderabad, India IEEE Computer Society • Founder Secretary of IEEE Computer Society Student Branch Chapter at PEC, Chandigarh • Played a leading role in establishing and building up the student branch chapter • Members of the chapter won 3 awards/scholarships under my leadership • Student Member: July 2001 - presently College Student Council, Punjab Engineering College • Co – opted member (2002 – 03) for excellence in technical activities • Consulted for college’s IT facilities management regarding Infrastructure on various occasions Member of Student Activities Committee, Language Technologies Institute REFERENCES Available upon request