JULY 5, 2022 — Anthony Rios, assistant professor of information systems and cyber security in the Carlos Alvarez College of Business at UTSA, has received a five-year $550,000 grant through the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program.
One of the most prestigious NSF awards, CAREER supports early-career faculty who demonstrate potential to serve as academic role models in research and education.
Rios will use the award to study natural language processing (NLP), a branch of artificial intelligence that enables computers to understand and interpret human language. It is used in everyday applications such as Google Translate and Amazon Alexa.
UTSA’s Anthony Rios aims to improve natural language processing, a kind of artificial intelligence utilized by applications like Amazon Alexa.
Most research focuses on generalizing or assuming a one-size-fits-all language framework. Rios, however, will apply the grant funding to develop NLP models that are specific to geographic populations, ethnic communities and other population-specific groups.
“NLP is about developing tools to understand language, but we do not have language without people,” explained Rios, who is also the associate director of the UTSA Cyber Center for Security and Analytics. “My specific focus is developing NLP tools for biomedical and social applications, which I feel can have a real-world impact and hopefully improve people’s lives.”
Rios’s project has three objectives: determine methods to detect correlations between community language and NLP model performance; develop a tool to help community leaders find potential harms of specific NLP models and help them decide if those harms are relevant to that community; and to find processes and opportunities to improve NLP model performance.
“I’m interested in understanding how these models can impact people, and what biases exist within them,” Rios said. “There is a lot of hype surrounding NLP and artificial intelligence, but I think it’s important to avoid hype and to understand the potential harms caused by NLP models when they are deployed.”
Rios comes to this project with a background and multidisciplinary research interests in NLP, machine learning and computational social science. He received his introduction to NLP during his computer science doctoral program at the University of Kentucky, where his faculty advisor was Ramakanth Kavuluru, an experienced NLP researcher. NLP’s numerous applications and its impact on people drew Rios to the field.
The Cyber Center for Security and Analytics at UTSA, which is focused on finding innovative solutions to societal challenges, will manage Rios’ project. Its emphasis on cultivating academic, private and public sector collaborations to facilitate research and to organize hands-on research workforce development opportunities make it an ideal site for his work.
“The center provides a platform for researchers to connect and collaborate and matches potential collaborators with researchers based on needs and expertise,” Rios said. “This helps acquire more university funding for researchers and students.”
UTSA Today is produced by University Communications and Marketing, the official news source of The University of Texas at San Antonio. Send your feedback to news@utsa.edu. Keep up-to-date on UTSA news by visiting UTSA Today. Connect with UTSA online at Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram.
The Texas Coalition for Heritage Spanish (TeCHS) seeks to provide a cooperative platform to support the success of Spanish heritage language speakers and their communities in Texas, assisting and promoting bicultural and bilingual development in the state.
River Walk Room (DBB 1.124,) Durango Building, Downtown CampusDr. Michael Doyle has had an immense impact on the field of catalysis and organic chemistry. Join in a one-day symposium. In order to honor Dr. Doyle’s colossal career accomplishments with his upcoming retirement, we are holding a one day symposium event
Riklin Auditorium (FS 1.406,) Frio Street Building, Downtown CampusThe San Antonio Military Health and Universities Research Forum (SURF) attracts presenters from around the nation to showcase the work of students, trainees, faculty and staff. The mission of the SURF conference is to “advance research collaborations among academic, military, and industry partners to improve health outcomes and readiness.”
TBDThe NHERI Summer Institute is a free event for early-career faculty, NHERI Graduate Student Council, K-12 educators from the San Antonio area, engineers, and researchers to learn more about the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) community.
La Villita Room (DBB 1.116,) Durango Building, Main CampusConnect with peer mentors and fellow first-gen and transfer students, and learn how you can join UTSA's First-Gen programs for the Fall 2023 semester.
Mentoring Hub (MS 2.02.02,) Multidisciplinary Studies Building, Main CampusBuilding the Dual Language Leader Symposium will provide a safe space for current and aspiring leaders to learn best practices, theories, policies, and systems that support a dual language bilingual education.
UTSA Southwest Campus, 300 Augusta St.Streaming of Spray the Word that will conclude with a discussion with San Antonio's Poet Laureate, Andrea "Vocab" Sanderson.
Aula Canaria (BVB 1.328,) Buena Vista Street Building, Downtown CampusThe University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property - for Texas, the nation and the world.
To be a premier public research university, providing access to educational excellence and preparing citizen leaders for the global environment.
We encourage an environment of dialogue and discovery, where integrity, excellence, inclusiveness, respect, collaboration and innovation are fostered.
UTSA is a proud Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) as designated by the U.S. Department of Education.
The University of Texas at San Antonio, a Hispanic Serving Institution situated in a global city that has been a crossroads of peoples and cultures for centuries, values diversity and inclusion in all aspects of university life. As an institution expressly founded to advance the education of Mexican Americans and other underserved communities, our university is committed to ending generations of discrimination and inequity. UTSA, a premier public research university, fosters academic excellence through a community of dialogue, discovery and innovation that embraces the uniqueness of each voice.
