People
Faculty Members
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Robert P. Futrelle |
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Professor Futrelle's research focuses on the automated analysis of the
knowledge content of scientific research literature. The goal is
to build information systems that take maximal advantage of the full
text and figure content of the literature.
Professor Futrelle's career has spanned theoretical physics,
experimental biology, and computer science. He developed what was
perhaps the first digital speech synthesis system; one of the first
syntax-directed natural-language parsers; one of the first
applications of linear programming to quantum-mechanics; the Galatea
system for interactive analysis of moving images; the most extensive
and detailed computer-based analysis of amoeboid cell locomotion of
its time; and a landmark paper on automated diagram summarization.
In 1989, Professor Futrelle, supported by a major National Science
Foundation grant, founded Northeastern's Biological Knowledge
Laboratory, which he still heads. His current research is aimed at developing
a radically new infrastructure for computational linguistics. The
infrastructure can support any view of language, but the current work
uses construction grammar. He has consistently involved
undergraduates in his research; some of them have gone on to PhD
programs in top-ranked universities.