Julia Rayz
Julia Taylor Rayz
Associate Professor and Assistant Department Head
jtaylor1@purdue.edu
765.494.9525Biography
My primary research interests lie in natural language understanding, knowledge discovery and representation, and computational recognition of salient information in texts, as well as in uncertainty management. These belong in the domain of Artificial Intelligence, in the areas of Natural Language Processing, and Cognitive Science on the one hand, and Imprecision Management on the other.
I chose computational detection of humor for my 2008 dissertation, as humor was a perfect test platform for multiple meaning detection in the same natural language text.
My long-term research interest and goal are to enable people to communicate with computers informally, using (eventually, any) natural language, with the full understanding of what is said, and perhaps what is more important, of what is left unsaid. While knowledge representation, reasoning, machine learning and computational linguistics are not new areas and have received considerable attention, combining the meaning extracted from natural language texts with our knowledge of the world, represented in some conceptual form, with built-in fuzziness, vagueness, and uncertainty, where necessary, the way people do in real life -- this computational task has not been resolved. My current research attempts to come closer to an understanding of how to construct such a model, and modeling and detecting humor has turned out to be a convenient and visible entry into it as well as a good testing mechanism. Such representation of text provides an opportunity to convert unstructured data into a more structured form (similar to graphs, lattices or hierarchies), and ultimately, to the fully structured databases, without losing information contained in it.
Education:
PhD, Computer Science and Engineering, University of Cincinnati, 2008
MS, Computer Science, University of Cincinnati, 2004
BA, Mathematics, University of Cincinnati, 1999
BS, Computer Science, University of Cincinnati, 1999
CIT Outstanding Faculty in Discovery, 2015
ICCI*CC Best Paper award, 2014
CERIAS Fellow, 2012
NAFIPS Best Student Paper finalist, 2008
ISHS Emerging Scholar Award, 2004
Book Chapters and Journal Publications:
Julia M. Taylor “Natural Language in Cyber-Physical Systems,” in Sang C. Suh, John Tanik, John N. Carbone, Abdullah Eroglu (eds), Applied Cyber-Physical Systems, Berlin: Springer, 2013
J. M. Taylor & V. Raskin, "Towards the Cognitive Informatics of Natural Language: The Case of Computational Humor," International Journal of Cognitive Informatics and Natural Intelligence, 7:3, 2013
V. Raskin & J. M. Taylor, "A Fresh Look at Semantic Natural Language Information Assurance and Security: NL-IAS From Watermarking and Downgrading to Discovering Unintended Inferences and on to Situational Conceptual Defaults," In B. Akhgar and H. R. Arabnia, Eds. Emerging Trends in Information and Communication Technologies Security, Amsterdam: Elsevier (Morgan Kaufmann), 2013
Raskin, V., Taylor, J.M., & Hempelmann, C.F., "Meaning- and Ontology-Based Technologies for High-Precision Language- and Information-Processing Computational Systems," Advanced Engineering Informatics, 27, 4-12, 2013
Taylor, J.M., & Raskin, V., "On the Transdisciplinary Field of Humor Research," Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science, 16(3), 133-148, 2013
Rezarta Islamaj Dogan, Yolanda Gil, Haym Hirsh, Narayanan C Krishnan, Michael Lewis, Cetin Mericli, Parisa Rashidi, Victor Raskin, Samarth Swarup, Wei Sun, Julia M Taylor, Lana Yeganova, “Reports on the 2012 AAAI Fall Symposium Series”, AI Magazine, 34:1, 2013
Julia M. Taylor “Ontology-Based View of Natural Language Meaning: The Case of Humor Detection,” Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 1:3, pp. 221-234, 2010
Julia M. Taylor, Lawrence J. Mazlack, “On Computational Humor,” IEEE Potentials Magazine, 29:6, pp. 9-12, 2010
Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann, and Julia M. Taylor, “How to Understand and Assess a Theory: The Evolution of the SSTH into the GTVH and Now into the OSTH,” Journal of Literary Theory, 3:2, pp. 285-312, 2009
René T. Proyer, Willibald Ruch, Julia Taylor (and 92 others), “Breaking ground in cross-cultural research on the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia): A multi-national study involving 73 countries,” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, 22:1-2, pp. 253-279, 2009
Pavel Klinov, Julia M. Taylor, Lawrence J. Mazlack, “Interval Rough Mereology and Description Logic: An Approach to Formal Treatment of Imprecision in the Semantic Web Ontologies,” Web Intelligence and Agent Systems: An international journal, 6:2, pp. 157-174, 2008
Julia M. Taylor, Pavel Klinov, Lawrence J. Mazlack, “A Description Logic Based Approach to Computational Humor,” in Salvatore Attardo, Diana Popa (eds), New Approaches to the Linguistics of Humor, Academic Printing House of Our Dunarea de Jos, Romania, 2007
Refereed Conference and Workshop Proceedings
L. M. Stuart, S. Tazhibayeva, A. R. Wagoner, & J. M. Taylor, “On Identifying Authors with Style,” IEEE-SMC Conference, Manchester, UK, 2013
L. M. Stuart, S. Tazhibayeva, A. R. Wagoner, & J. M. Taylor, “Style Features for Authors in Two Languages,” Web Intelligence Conference, Atlanta, USA, 2013
L. M. Stuart, J. M. Taylor, V. Raskin, “On a Noun-Driven Syntactic Paradigm,” Twenty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Bellevue, Washington, 2013
J. M. Taylor, & V. Raskin, “Natural Language Cognition of Humor by Humans and Computers: A Computational Semantic Approach,” IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Informatics & Cognitive Computing, Fordham University, New York, NY, July 2013
L. M. Stuart, J. M, Taylor, & V. Raskin, “Computing with Prepositions: Syntax.” North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society (NAFIPS ‘13), Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 2013
J. M. Taylor, V. Raskin, & L. M. Stuart, “Computing with Prepositions: Semantics” North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society Conference (NAFIPS ‘13), Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 2013
L. M. Stuart, J. M, Taylor, & V. Raskin, “The Importance of Nouns in Text Processing,” Cognitive Science Society (CogSci ’13), Berlin, Germany, August 2013
V. Raskin, L. M. Stuart, & J. M. Taylor, “Is Natural Language Ever Really Vague? A Computational Semantic View.” IEEE International Conference on Cybernetics, Lausanne, Switzerland, June 2013
J. M. Taylor, “Understanding and Processing Information of Various Grain Sizes,” International Conference on Robot Intelligent Technology and Applications (RITA), Gwangju, South Korea, December 2012
J. M. Taylor, “Do Jokes Have to Be Funny: Analysis of 50 ‘Theoretically Jokes’,”. AAAI Artificial Intelligence of Humor Symposium, Arlington, VA, November 2012
Ji Hyeon Hong, Byung-Cheol Min, Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin, and Eric T. Matson “NL-Based Communication With Firefighting Robots,” IEEE-SMC Conference, Seoul, South Korea, October 2012
Lauren M. Stuart, Julia M. Taylor, and Victor Raskin “Towards Noun-Driven Parsing,” IEEE-SMC Conference, Seoul, South Korea, October 2012
Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin, and Lauren M. Stuart “Machine Human Understanding: Syntax and Semantics Revisited,” IEEE-SMC Conference, Seoul, South Korea, October 2012
Julia M. Taylor and Victor Raskin “Understanding and Structuring NL Descriptions: The Case of 101 Animals,” IEEE-SMC Conference, Seoul, South Korea, October 2012
Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin “Structuring Information from Natural Language Descriptions: Accounting for Uncertainty,” International Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, Berkeley, CA, August 2012
Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann “Ontological Properties of Animals in a Children’s Dictionary With and Without Common-Sense Knowledge,” Cognitive Science Conference, Japan, August 2012
Christian F. Hempelmann, Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin “Tightening Up Joke Structure: Not by Length Alone”, Cognitive Science Conference, Japan, August 2012
James A. Crowder, Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin “Autonomous Creation and Detection of Procedural Memory Scripts,” International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Las Vegas, NE, July 2012
Lauren M. Stuart, Julia Taylor, Victor Raskin “Noun-Driven Syntactic Parsing for Natural Language Interfaces to Object-Centered Information Stores,” Society for Design and Process Science Conference, Berlin, Germany, June 2012
Mindaugas Indriu¯nas, Julia Taylor, Victor Raskin “Mereological Considerations for Improving Semantic Ontology,” Society for Design and Process Science Conference, Berlin, Germany, June 2012
Victor Raskin, Julia M. Taylor, Eric T. Matson, “Towards an Ontological Modeling of Something Very Much Like Consciousness: The Harms Way,” Society for Design and Process Science Conference, Berlin, Germany, June 2012
Victor Raskin, Julia M. Taylor “Computing with Nouns and Verbs”, FUZZ-IEEE Conference, Australia, June 2012
Eric Matson, Julia Taylor, Victor Raskin, Byung-Cheol Min, Eunsun Wilson “A Natural Language Model for Enabling Human, Agent, Robot and Machine Interaction,” The 5th IEEE International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Applications, Wellington, New Zealand, December 2011
Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann, "From Disambiguation Failures to Common-Sense Knowledge Acquisition: A Day in the Life of an Ontological Semantic System," Web Iintelligence Conference, Lyon, France, August 2011
Julia M. Taylor, Christian F. Hempelmann, Victor Raskin "Post-Logical Verification of Ontology and Lexicons:The Ontological Semantic Technology Approach," International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Las Vegas, NE, July 2011
Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin "Graph Decomposition and Its Use for Ontology Verification and Semantic Representation," Intelligent Linguistic Technologies Workshop, International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Las Vegas, NE, July 2011
Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann “Towards Computational Guessing of Unknown Word Meanings: The Ontological Semantic Approach," Cognitive Science Conference, Boston, MA, July 2011
Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin "Understanding the Unknown: Unattested Input Processing in Natural Language," FUZZ-IEEE Conference, Taipei, Taiwan, June 2011
Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin “Human and Computer Humor Collaboration: What Can Computational Analysis of Humor Reveal” SDPS Conference, Jeju Island, South Korea, June 2011
Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin, Maxim S. Petrenko, Christian F. Hempelmann “Multiple Noun Expression Analysis: An Implementation of Ontological Semantic Technology,” Computational Linguistics – Applications Workshop, 8pp. Wisla, Poland, October 2010
Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann, Salvatore Attardo “An Unintentional Inference and Ontological Property Defaults,” International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Istanbul, Turkey, October 2010
Victor Raskin, Julia M. Taylor, Christian F. Hempelmann “Ontological Semantic Technology for Detecting Insider Threat and Social Engineering,” New Security Paradigms Workshop, pp. 115-128, Concord, MA, September 2010
Julia M. Taylor “Computational Semantic Detection of Information Overlap in Text,” Cognitive Science Conference, pp. 2170-2175, Portland, OR, August 2010
Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin “Fuzzy Ontology for Natural Language,” 29th International Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, 6 pp, Toronto, Canada, July 2010
Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann, Whitney R. Vandiver “Computing the Meaning of Number Expressions in English: The Common Case,” Intelligent Linguistic Technologies Workshop, International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 914-920, Las Vegas, NE, July 2010
Julia M. Taylor, Christian F. Hempelmann, Victor Raskin “On an Automatic Acquisition Toolbox for Ontologies and Lexicons in Ontological Semantics,” International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 863-869, Las Vegas, NE, July 2010
Christian F. Hempelmann, Julia M. Taylor, Victor Raskin “Application-guided Ontological Engineering,” International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 843-849, Las Vegas, NE, July 2010
Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann, Julia M. Taylor “Guessing vs. Knowing: The Two Approaches to Semantics in Natural Language Processing,” Annual International Conference Dialogue 2010, pp. 642-650, Moscow, Russia, May 2010 (refereed plenary paper)
Julia M Taylor “Computational Detection of Humor: A Dream or A Nightmare. The Ontological Semantics Approach,” Computational Intelligence Approaches for Ontology-based Knowledge Discovery Workshop, Web Intelligence Conference, pp. 429-432, Milan, Italy, September 2009
Victor Raskin, Julia M. Taylor “The (Not So) Unbearable Fuzziness of Natural Language: The Ontological Semantic Way of Computing With Words,” 6pp, 28th International Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, Cincinnati, OH, June 2009
Julia M. Taylor, Lawrence J. Mazlack “On Perception of Size: Comparing Gigantic Mice and Tiny Elephants,” 6pp, 27th International Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, 6 pp., New York City, NY, May 2008
Julia M. Taylor, Lawrence J. Mazlack “Multiple Component Computational Recognition of Children’s Jokes,” International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics Proceedings, pp. 1194-1199, Montreal, Canada, October 2007
Julia M. Taylor, Lawrence J. Mazlack “An Investigation into Computational Recognition of Children’s Jokes,” pp. 1904-1905, 22nd Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Vancouver, Canada, July 2007
Julia M. Taylor, Lawrence J. Mazlack “Description Logic-Based Approximate Joke Comparison,” 25th International Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, pp. 311-316, Montreal, Canada, June 2006
Julia M. Taylor, Lawrence J. Mazlack “Toward Computational Recognition of Humorous Intent,” Cognitive Science Conference 2005, pp. 2166-2171, Stresa, Italy, July 2005
Julia M. Taylor, Lawrence J. Mazlack “Focused Statistical Joke Generation,” 2005 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 6pp., Las Vegas, NE, June 2005
Julia M. Taylor, Lawrence J. Mazlack “Approximate Joke Similarity,” 24th International Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, pp. 145-149, Ann Arbor, MI, June 2005
Julia M. Taylor, Daniel Poliakov, Lawrence J. Mazlack “Domain-Specific Ontology Merging for the Semantic Web” 24th International Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, pp. 418-423, Ann Arbor, MI, June 2005
Julia M. Taylor, Lawrence J. Mazlack “Humorous Wordplay Recognition,” International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics Proceedings, pp.3305-3311, The Hague, The Netherlands, October 2004
Julia M. Taylor, Lawrence J. Mazlack “Computationally Recognizing Wordplay In Jokes,” Cognitive Science Conference Proceedings 2004, pp. 1315-1321, Chicago, IL, August 2004
Industry Engagement:
Riverglass Inc, 2008--2011
Consulting:
hakia, Inc., New York City, New York (2007-2008)
Professional Affiliations:
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Cognitive Science Society (CogSci)
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Computational Intelligence Society
International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS)
Society for Design and Process Science (SDPS)