Lead Investigators
Ramon Ferrer i Cancho
Principal investigator
Associate Professor
Tenured associate professor at UPC focuses on two main research interests. Firstly, he studies statistical patterns in languages and communication systems, aiming to develop a concise theory of communication principles across languages and species. He has proposed principles like syntactic dependency distance minimization and swap distance minimization. He also suggests that projectivity, scarcity of crossing dependencies, and consistent branching are consequences of dependency distance minimization. Secondly, he tackles mathematical, statistical, and computational challenges that emerge from his research.
[email] [website]
Ariadna Quattoni
Associate Professor
As an associate professor at UPC’s Computer Science Department and co-founder of dMetrics, she is a leading researcher in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. Her work focuses on spectral learning of grammars and automata, as well as interactive learning methods. Currently, she is leading the ERC-funded project INTERACT.
[email] [website]
Researchers
Marta Arias
Associate Professor
[email] [website]
Marta Arias (PhD in Computer Science, Tufts University 2004) has extensive experience in applied machine learning, both in the context of academia and in collaboration with industry (electricity sector, sports sector, to name a few). In particular, the focus of her work is in modeling structured data (graphs, sequences, time-series) that change over time.
Juan Luis Esteban
Associate Professor
[email] [website]
He is an associate professor at UPC in the Computer Science Department. He has worked in proof complexity, specially resolution and similar proof systems. His main interest are now SAT and MAXSAT, and the study of tree measures applied mainly to quantitative linguistics.
Jaume Baixeries
Associate Professor
[email] [website]
As an associate professor at UPC’s Computer Science Department, his research interests are focused on mathematical models for language acquisition, as well as the characterization of database constraints through Formal Concept Analysis.
Antoni Hernández Fernández
Associate Professor
[email] [website]
Assistant Professor of Physics (Departament de Física, 2008-2010) and Educational Science at ICE-UPC since 2008. Teacher in secondary school and Terrassa Art and Design School (1997-2023). Holds degrees in Physics and Linguistics (1997 and 2003). Completed a transdisciplinary doctoral thesis in Cognitive Science at UB in 2014, focusing on Quantitative Linguistics. Additionally, he is a member of the UPC Ethics Committee.
Glyn Morrill
Associate Professor
[email] [website]
Prof. Morrill completed his degree in Computer Science at Cambridge in 1984 and his PhD in Cognitive Science at Edinburgh in 1988. Since then his research has been on technical analysis of the syntax and semantics of human language (logical categorial grammar). Prof. Morrill has published books on logic and language with Kluwer Academic Press, Edicions UPC, and Oxford University Press.
Audi Primadhanty
Postdoctoral researcher
[email] [website]
She holds a Computer Science degree, an Erasmus Mundus Masters degree in Data Mining and Knowledge Management, and a PhD in Natural Language Processing. In addition to her academic research experience, she has also worked as a software engineer and an applied research scientist in the industry. Her current research focuses on active learning and its application on NLP tasks.
Bernardino Casas
Associate Professor
[email] [website]
His Ph.D. thesis in progress is on the evolution of language in children, the statistical laws of language and the application of computational models to language acquisition. His recent publications include The evolution of language in children (Evolang, 2014) and Testing the Robustness of Laws of Polysemy and Brevity Versus Frequency (SLSP, Springer, 2016).
Ph.D. Candidates
Lluís Alemany Puig
[email] [website]
He holds a Computer Science degree (2017) and a Masters degree in Computer Science (2019). His Ph.D. is focused on solving optimization problems of linear arrangements of trees under different kinds of constraints with a view to finding applications to Quantitative Linguistics.
César González Gutiérrez
[email] [website]
With a background in Philosophy and a Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Natural Language Processing. His research primarily revolves around investigating the structure of text embeddings and exploring their potential applications in Active Learning.
Former Master Students
Sonia Petrini
She is a data scientist with a passion for languages and statistics. She has written her Master’s Thesis within the LQMC research group, under the supervision of Ramon Ferrer-i-Cancho, and is currently collaborating with him on a project on the optimality of word lengths. Last but not least, she loves handstands, acroyoga, playing the violin, and creating beautiful plots.
Davide Locatelli
With multiple degrees in Philosophy, Computer Science, and Artificial Intelligence, he is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Natural Language Processing. His research aims to develop efficient and interactive algorithms, focusing on Compositional Generalization, Emergent Communication, and Active Learning. He seeks to create advanced technology that adapts to the evolving demands of the modern world and pushes the boundaries of AI.