Eric J. Sclafani

Computational linguist 🖥️   |  Life-long learner 📚   |  Photographer 📷

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Research

Graduated from Stony Brook University with a master’s degree in computational linguistics. My research focused on using advanced stylometric feature extraction to embed language data into high-dimensional vectors. These vectors were then used for authorship attribution, the task of automatically identifying the author of a document. This work was done with Dr. Owen Rambow on the IARPA HIATUS grant for which I authored two Python software for performing quantitative analysis over English grammar: Gram2Vec and Sentence Regex Matcher (SRM).

Outside of computational linguistics, I also love data analysis and exploration. When I’m not working, I enjoy writing EDA code on interesting datasets. In particular, I love crafting beautiful and interactive data visualizations using Python’s Dash and Plotly packages. In my off time, I am currently working on an interactive language data visualization tool to hopefully assist NLP engineers with text data EDA.

Hobbies

My primary hobby is teaching myself new skills. Over the years, I’ve taught myself many things such as python, machine learning, math (linear algebra, stats, probability, differential calculus), and more. I am currently on a journey to vastly improve my machine learning/deep learning knowledge and skillset. In the future, I also want to teach myself web development with Javascript.

Outside of techy stuff, I love reading. My favorite genre is horror and favorite author is H.P. Lovecraft. I also enjoy photography, specifically taking macro photos of plants and insects (check out my Gallery!).