Ralph Grishman
{{Short description|Computer scientist}}
{{Multiple issues|{{Peacock|date= April 2025}}
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| name = Ralph Grishman
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| fields = computational linguistics, computer science
| workplaces = New York University, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
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| alma_mater = Columbia University (PhD in physics)
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| doctoral_students = Carol Friedman,
Heng Ji,
[https://www.riken.jp/en/research/labs/aip/goalorient_tech/lang_inf_access_tech/ Satoshi Sekine],
[https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/roman-yangarber Roman Yangarber]
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| known_for = Computational Linguistics,
Natural Language Processing, Information Extraction
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| awards = [https://aclweb.org/aclwiki/ACL_Fellows#2017_Fellows Fellow of the Association of Computational Linguistics] (2017),
[https://www.aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php/ACL_Lifetime_Achievement_Award_Recipients ACL Lifetime Achievement Award] (2024)
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| website = [https://cs.nyu.edu/~grishman/ Website @ New York University]
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Ralph Grishman is an American computer scientist and professor at New York University's Courant Institute.{{Cite web |title=Ralph Grishman |url=https://cs.nyu.edu/~grishman/ |access-date=2025-04-22 |website=cs.nyu.edu}} He is known for his work in computational linguistics, natural language processing (NLP), and for helping establish Information Extraction (IE) in NLP. Grishman's contributions were recognized by the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), the international body promoting research in computational linguistics, with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024.{{Cite web |title=ACL Home Page: ACL Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients |url=https://www.aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php/ACL_Lifetime_Achievement_Award_Recipients |access-date=2025-01-08 |website=www.aclweb.org |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=ACL Lifetime Achievement Award for 2024. New York University news |url=https://cs.nyu.edu/dynamic/about/news/549/ |access-date=2025-01-08 |website=cs.nyu.edu}}
Career
Early in his career, Grishman worked with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where he served as a Member of the ARPA Speech & Natural Language Standing Committee (1992-1994) and as Chair of the DARPA TIPSTER Program Phase II Architecture Working Group from 1994 to 1998.
In 1990, Grishman served as Vice President of the international Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL),{{cite web |website=aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php |url=https://www.aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=ACL_Officers#1991|title=ACL Vice President and Executive Committee (1990)|access-date=5 February 2020}} and was elected President of the ACL in 1991.{{cite web |website=aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php |url=https://www.aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=ACL_Officers#1991|title=ACL President and Executive Committee (1991)|access-date=5 February 2020}}
From 2010 to 2016, Grishman worked with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and as the organizer of the [https://tac.nist.gov/ Text Analysis Conference].
Grishman has acted as a program chair and a member of executive committees for numerous conferences of the ACL and its various chapters.{{cite web |title=ACL Elected Officers |url=https://www.aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=ACL_Officers |access-date=5 February 2020 |website=aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php}} In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics.{{cite web |title=ACL Fellows |url=https://aclweb.org/aclwiki/ACL_Fellows#2017_Fellows |access-date=5 February 2020 |website=aclweb.org/aclwiki/ACL_Fellows}}{{cite web |title=News & Events: Ralph Grishman has been named a Fellow of the Association of Computational Linguistics. |url=https://cs.nyu.edu/dynamic/news/367/ |access-date=5 February 2020}} In 2024, he was awarded the ACL Lifetime Achievement Award.{{cite web |title=ACL Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients - Admin Wiki |url=https://www.aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php/ACL_Lifetime_Achievement_Award_Recipients |website=www.aclweb.org |access-date=18 May 2025 |language=en}}
= Research =
Ralph Grishman's work covers a range of problems in the field of computational linguistics and natural language processing.
= Information extraction =
Grishman has done a lot of work in the field of Information Extraction and was one of the original designers and contributors to the MUC competitions (MUCs). His ‘‘Proteus’’ system{{Cite conference|url=https://aclanthology.org/M95-1014.pdf|title=The NYU system for MUC-6 or where's the syntax?|first1=Ralph|last1=Grishman|website=scholar.google.com|book-title=Sixth Message Understanding Conference (MUC-6)|date=November 6–8, 1995|access-date=2023-09-11}} achieved high performance among more than 20 international participants — including universities and companies — at the Sixth MUC Competition (MUC-6),{{Cite web|url=https://cs.nyu.edu/~grishman/muc6.html|title=MUC-6, the sixth in a series of Message Understanding Conferences|access-date=2023-09-11}} specifically in the ‘‘Scenario Template’’ task, which represented the most complex challenge evaluated at MUC-6.{{Cite conference|url=https://aclanthology.org/C96-1079.pdf|title=Message Understanding Conference-6: A Brief History|first1=Ralph|last1=Grishman|first2=Beth|last2=Sundheim|book-title=The 16th International Conference on Computational Linguistics|date=1996|access-date=2023-09-11}}{{Cite conference|url=https://aclanthology.org/M95-1002.pdf|title=Overview of Results of the MUC-6 Evaluation|first1=Beth|last1=Sundheim|book-title=Sixth Message Understanding Conference (MUC-6)|date=1995|access-date=2023-09-11}}
The MUC competitions, along with the later ACE program, helped establish the model for future ‘‘Shared Tasks’’ — formal international competitions where academic and industrial teams evaluate their systems against standardized challenges.
= Other areas of NLP =
Grishman worked on the Linguistic String Project,{{Cite web|url=https://cs.nyu.edu/cs/projects/lsp/LSP_intro.html|title=Linguistic String Project.|access-date=2023-09-11}} led by Naomi Sager.
He has published in areas including information extraction, machine learning, machine translation, syntactic parsing, and syntactic treebanks for natural languages. His work appears in the proceedings of computer science conferences, including the meetings of the Association for Computational Linguistics and EMNLP.{{Cite web |title=dblp: A Case Study on Learning a Unified Encoder of Relations. |url=https://dblp.uni-trier.de/rec/conf/aclnut/FuMNG18.html |access-date=2025-05-16 |website=dblp.uni-trier.de |language=en}}
His published monographs include a textbook on Computational Linguistics.{{Cite book|url=https://ia801008.us.archive.org/0/items/computationallinguisticsanintroductionralphgrishmancambridgeuniversitypress1986/Computational%20Linguistics_%20An%20Introduction-Ralph%20Grishman-Cambridge%20University%20Press%20%281986%29.pdf|title=Computational Linguistics: an Introduction.|author=Ralph Grishman|publisher=Cambridge University Press, Cambridge |date=1986|access-date=2023-09-11}}
References
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Category:Natural language processing researchers