The recent growth of the World Wide Web and the vast improvements in computing power of the last decade have led to a greater need for education and research in human language technology. This interdisciplinary field includes key technological and scientific areas such as automatic speech recognition and synthesis, natural language understanding and generation conversational agents, augmentative and alternative communication, audio and text-based information retrieval, and grammar and spelling aids.
The curriculum for the certificate includes five core courses, consisting of a computer programming foundation course plus four courses in human language technologies (e.g., natural language processing, morphology and syntax, speech processing, and recognition). At least two of the language technologies courses must be outside the student’s home department.
Students are required to major in computer science, electrical and computer engineering, linguistics, or speech, language, and hearing sciences. The program is available to master’s or PhD students at CU-Boulder, including students in concurrent bachelor’s/master’s programs. For further information see www.colorado.edu/linguistics/programs/grad, or Institute of Cognitive Science at ics.colorado.edu.