Andrew Fowler

fowlera@ohsu.edu

New Things

I recently placed first in the Oregon Three Minute Thesis state championship. You can watch my presentation here.

Who I Am (in a non-metaphysical sense)

I'm a PhD candidate in the Natural Language Processing group of the Center for Spoken Language Understanding (CSLU) at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). My advisors are Steven Bedrick and Brian Roark.

Research Interests

I study language modeling, with particular focus on its applications in assistive technology, alternative text input methods, predictive text in alternative and augmentative communication (AAC), small-footprint models, and model adaptation.

Education

Employment

  • Graduate Research Assistant, Sep 2010 – Present, OHSU, Portland, OR.
  • Software Engineering Intern, Summer 2013 & Winter 2013/14, Google, Mountain View, CA.
  • Language Modeling Research Intern, Summer 2012, Nuance, Boston, MA.
  • Quality Data Analyst, 2007 – 2010, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Pullman, WA.
  • Graduate Teaching Assistant, 2004 – 2006, WSU Mathematics Department, Pullman WA.

Papers and Publications

  • Effects of Language Modeling and its Personalization on Touchscreen Typing Performance
    A. Fowler, K. Partridge, C. Chelba, X. Bi, T. Ouyang, and S. Zhai — SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2015.
    Best of CHI: Honorable Mention
    [paper]
     
  • Brain-Computer Interface With Language Model-Electroencephalography Fusion for Locked-In Syndrome
    B. Oken, U. Orhan, D. Erdogmus, A. Fowler, A. Mooney, B. Peters, M. Miller, and M. Fried-Oken — Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, vol. 28, no. 4.
    [abstract]
     
  • Improved Inference and Autotyping in EEG-based BCI Typing Systems
    A. Fowler, B. Roark, U. Orhan, D. Erdogmus, and M. Fried-Oken — Proceedings of ACM SIGACCESS 2013
    [paper]
     
  • Autocompletion and Autodeletion in Binary Typing Systems
    A. Fowler, B. Roark, and M. Fried-Oken — Northwest NLP 2012.
    [abstract] [poster]
     
  • Improved Accuracy Using Recursive Bayesian Estimation Based Language Model Fusion in ERP-based BCI Typing Systems
    U. Orhan, D. Erdogmus, B. Roark, B. Oken, S. Purwar, K.E. Hild, A. Fowler, and M. Fried-Oken — Proceedings of EMBC 2012
    [paper]
     
  • Language Models in Keyboard Emulation
    B. Roark, A. Fowler, and M. Fried-Oken — Text Entry Methods Workshop of ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2012. (Refereed Conference Presentation - Unpublished)
    [abstract]
     
  • Towards Technology-Assisted Co-Construction
    B. Roark, A. Fowler, R. Sproat, C. Gibbons, and M. Fried-Oken — Conference on Empirical Methods on Natural Language Processing, Speech & Language Processing for Assistive Technologies (SLPAT) 2011.
    [paper]

Presentations

  • Adaptation for Mobile Text Entry. Google Internship with Shumin Zhai, Feb 2014.
  • Leveraging Wikipedia for Improved Voice Search Language Models. Nuance Internship with Nathan Bodenstab, Oct 2012.
  • Towards Technology-Assisted Co-Construction [slides]. CSLU, Jan 2012

Activities & Awards

  • First Place, State of Oregon, Three-Minute Thesis Competition, Spring 2014
     
  • Sidney G. Hacker Undergraduate Research Scholarship, WSU Mathematics Department. Studied additive number theory approaches to scale/weighting problems.
     
  • Pass with Distinction, WSU Honors Thesis. Minesweeper: A Statistical and Combinatorial Approach. WSU Honors College.
     
  • National Merit Scholar