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Representing SUNY Buffalo, team Proto is an amalgamation of graduate students from the Computer Science and Computational Linguistics department.

By SUNY Buffalo
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Representing SUNY Buffalo, team Proto is an amalgamation of graduate students from the Computer Science and Computational Linguistics department at UB. With a unique combination of skills, we hope to provide a memorable experience through our charismatic and persona based factual socialbot. With the dream of advancing research in conversational AI, team Proto strives to live up to its name: the first.

Buffalo-PROTO.jpg
From left: Students Erin Pacquetet, Elizabeth Soper, Souvik Das, Sougata Saha, and faculty advisor Rohin Srihari.

Location: Buffalo, NY, USA
Faculty advisor: Rohini Srihari
Credit: Douglas Levere

Sougata S. - Team leader

Sougata is a first year PhD student in the Computer Science and Engineering department at University at Buffalo, New York. Advised by professor Rohini K. Srihari, his research areas are deep learning, conversational systems, natural language processing and text mining. Sougata's current research projects involve conversational systems and leveraging machine learning for social good.

Souvik D.

Souvik is a Computer Science and Engineering Graduate student at State University of New York at Buffalo, advised by Prof. Rohini K. Sirhari. His current area of research is Symbolic Reasoning in Conversational Systems. In the past, Souvik has worked in several successful startups and MNCs mainly in applied machine learning roles. Some selected projects are, predicting social unrest using deep learning methods, metadata extraction using transformer models and deep entity resolution.

Elizabeth S.

Elizabth is a PhD student in Linguistics, with a focus on computational semantics.

Erin P.

Erin is a PhD student in Linguistics working on the linguistic analysis of non-canonical text production through keystroke logs and interested in language production as a spatiotemporal and non-linear process. Her research tries to find correlations between how people type and what they type, to cast a new light on the way we represent language production processes. After completing a B.A in Anglophone Studies and a Research M.A. in Linguistics, she joined the University at Buffalo in 2018, where she is currently earning a M.S in Computational Linguistics as well as a PhD.

Rohini Srihari - Faculty advisor

Rohini Srihari is a scientist, educator and entrepreneur. Dr. Srihari is a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Dept. at the University at Buffalo where her research in artificial intelligence focuses on natural language processing, machine learning and web mining. She has founded several language technology start-ups. She served as Chief Data Scientist at PeaceTech Lab, United States Institute of Peace. She directed a multidisciplinary team in the development of an AI platform for early warning of social disruption in fragile countries. Her research focus is AI for Social Impact including combating misinformation and conversational AI.

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