Collins appointed to X Window Career Development Professorship

June 27, 2005

Mike Collins received a BA in 1992, and an M.Phil. in 1993, both from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. He joined the department in 2003, and was promoted to Associate Professor effective July 1 of this year.

Mike’s research spans two fields: machine learning and natural language processing. He is internationally known for innovative approaches that extend traditional machine learning methods (where items can be stored as fixed length feature vectors in a vector space) to problems that do not have a vector structure (such as natural languages). In particular, he invents machine learning tools motivated by problems in natural language processing, but which are much more widely applicable, for example to problems in computational biology, computer vision and other areas. He was awarded a Sloan Fellowship on the basis of these scholarly contributions, and is the recipient of best paper awards at the UAI and EMNLP conferences.

In addition to an impressive array of research accomplishments, Mike is also an excellent educator. In addition to exemplary teaching in the undergraduate core, where students praise his clear explanations, and depth of knowledge, Mike has also help create a new course in natural language processing, where students highlight his command of the material, clear and cohesive lectures, and general enthusiasm for the field.