Joshi earns honors for linking engineering, speech

Few University professors could lay claim to simultaneously being responsible for the way grammar shapes language and winning one of the highest professional distinctions given in the engineering field. But Computer and Cognitive Science Professor Aravind Joshi has managed to complete both tasks. Integrating computer science and linguistics in his studies since 1958, Joshi's primary area of research is the computer processing of natural language. And recently, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering -- a private, nonprofit institution that advises the federal government and conducts independent studies in engineering and technology. At 69 years old, he is one of 80 members and eight foreign associates to be inducted into NAE this year, bringing total membership to 1,984. "I was very happy to receive this honor," Joshi said. "I consider it not only an honor for myself, but an acceptance of my area of work -- which has now become mainstream -- [combining] computer science and engineering." According to NAE President Wm. Wulf, membership in the Academy honors those who have demonstrated exceptional accomplishments in the exploration of new and developing areas in engineering. In 1958 and 1959, Joshi developed the world's first computer mechanism for breaking down sentences into their grammatical parts. He also invented a system called Tree-Adjoining Grammar which is used to indicate the grammatical structures that are associated with given words. According to Joshi, the process takes "any arbitrary sentence and gives an analysis" -- telling who did what to whom, for example. Engineering School Interim Dean Eduardo Glandt said Joshi has been "a visionary in interdisciplinary work." Joshi joined the faculty at the University in 1961 and has held joint appointments in the Linguistics Department since 1964 and the Psychology Department since 1983. Psychology Professor Lila Gleitman, co-director of the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, has been working with Joshi for several decades. "I think it is a distinguished appointment for the Academy to make," she said. "He's obviously a jewel in the crown [here]." She added that, "In addition to his internationally known interdisciplinary research, he's been a powerful force even in undergraduate studies, where he was instrumental in creating the cognitive science major." Joshi has contributed significantly to computational research on discourse and has led the establishment of research and educational forums in artificial intelligence and cognitive science in both the United States and India. He holds degrees from Pune University and the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore, both in India. Joshi earned a master's degree in 1958 and a doctorate in 1960 from the University. This latest award is one among many in a long list of prizes and high-profile appointments Joshi has garnered through the years. He is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, as well as a founding fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. He is also a member of the Cognitive Science Society, the Linguistic Society of America and the Association for Computational Linguistics, for which he served as president in 1974. In 1972, he was a Guggenheim Fellow and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. Twenty-five years later, Joshi won the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Research Excellence Award -- an honor given every two years to a scientist who has carried out a research program of extraordinarily high quality. At least seven other University professors have been elected to membership in the Academy in the past.