Department of Computer Science

Johannes Bjerva – Associate Professor in the DW group

Johannes Bjerva – Associate Professor in the DW group

Last modified: 14.10.2021

RESEARCH AREA AND FOCUS

My research is in Natural Language Processing (NLP). As in other fields of AI, many modern approaches require vast amounts of data to work well. I’m interested in seeing how we can make do in situations where we don’t have that luxury. In particular, I’m looking into how we can use data from languages which are related for one another. For instance, if we have a lot of data in Danish, it should be possible to take advantage of that when working in Norwegian.

PROJECTS

I’m involved in quite a few smaller projects with various collaborators, for instance in low-resource NLP. For one, I just hosted a visit by Arturo Oncevay (PhD student, University of Edinburgh). I’m also involved in the DREAMS project. Beyond that, I’m seeking funding to hire PhD students, with the overarching goal of making language technologies accessible also in disadvantaged regions of the world, and answering the question of “How can structured knowledge of languages be used to enable NLP for truly low-resource languages?”

PRIVATE/FUN FACTS

I became a father to little Solveig in April, and am looking forward to some nice paternity leave over the winter! :) Other than that, I’m into triathlon, and my goal is to do the Copenhagen Ironman in 2022.