UC Irvine News Brief: UCI faculty awarded $2.9 million by national intelligence office
Computer science professor Padhraic Smyth and colleagues have received two multiyear grants to develop new models and algorithms.
Padhraic Smyth, UCI professor of computer science and director of the Center for Machine Learning & Intelligent Systems, and fellow faculty have been awarded two multiyear grants worth $2.9 million by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, a center within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A $1.6 million grant will support an effort by Smyth (pictured) and research faculty member David Newman to develop new models and algorithms that can detect statistically significant changes in language usage and citation patterns to measure how scientific disciplines are evolving over time. A $1.3 million award that began in the spring is funding an endeavor by Smyth, Newman and cognitive sciences professor Mark Steyvers to create new statistical topic modeling algorithms to help users automatically search and understand large amounts of unstructured text. Both projects involve partnerships with other universities.
