Computer Science PhD student Named Apple Scholar

| March 14, 2023 

Xisen Jin selected for his work in speech and natural language processing

Xisen Jin has been named a 2023 Apple Scholar in AI/ML. Photo/Xisen Jin.

Xisen Jin, a PhD computer science student at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, has been named a 2023 Apple Scholar in AI/ML. Jin studies under the supervision of Xiang Ren, an assistant professor in computer science and the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair, in the USC Natural Language Processing (NLP) group. Jin was selected for his work in speech and natural language processing (NLP).

“Humans have the ability to continuously learn from the world, while large NLP models struggle with this basic ability,” said Jin. “My research tries to enable large NLP models to learn continuously from emerging data, in contrast to a static dataset. This allows large NLP models to improve their skills over time and obtain a better knowledge of the world.”

In turn, he continued, “this helps to build more personalized and accessible models for each user as users continuously interact with these models. Chatbots and personal assistants, for example, will learn the preferences of users over time via continual learning. They will also learn to respond with up-to-date answers when you ask questions related to factual knowledge.”

Jin, who also won a Bloomberg PhD fellowship in 2020, was selected for the fellowship, which recognizes the contributions of researchers in computer science and engineering at the graduate and postgraduate levels. Scholars are selected based on their innovative research, record as thought leaders and collaborators, and commitment to advancing their respective fields, according to the fellowship website. They receive funding, internship opportunities, and mentorship from an Apple researcher in their field.

“Winning the fellowship is very encouraging to me,” said Jin. “I am excited to know that my past research work and my future research direction are appreciated by the top-tier industry community. I am excited to see how my research could improve the experience of broad users in real-world scenarios.”

Published on March 14th, 2023

Last updated on May 16th, 2024

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