Eric Sclafani

Stony Brook University

Cumulative GPA: 3.7/4.0

Gram2vec

Built a linguistic feature extractor in python under the supervision of Dr. Owen Rambow for a government-funded research project involving authorship attribution. This project will combine linguistic and NLP techniques in order to automatically detect the author of a document. Features of gram2vec include:

• Vectorizes a collection of documents using spaCy and Sci-kit learn by searching for key grammatical and syntactic features indicative of author's stylistic tendencies.
• Utilizing these stylistic vectors, applies a K-Nearest Neighbors classifier to perform ablation studies to tell which features are useful when identifying authors.

Deltastar

Open source python package (in-progress) for creating deterministic finite-state transducers (FSTs). Began as a final project for Computational Linguistics 2 class and optimized thereafter. Features include:

• Compiles string rewrite rules into FSTs which are applied to input strings to achieve a desired output
• Constructs graphical representations of FSTs via the DOT graph description language

Click here to view the code!

Multilingual Belief

Collaborated on a team headed by Dr. Owen Rambow on a research project utilizing the BERT multilingual transformer to model source-and-target belief in English, Mandarin, and Spanish natural language text. Responsibilities included:

• Prepared input datasets using bash and submitted replicated model runs with varying initial seeds to a high performance GPU cluster over a remote SSH server
• Wrote python script to batch calculate average and standard deviation from output JSON files to reduce the variance caused by making multiple model runs over separate seeds
• Compiled cleaned data into spreadsheet for analysis

Finite-state Morphological Analyzer for Tati

Worked with a team lead by Dr. Jeffrey Heinz to create a morphological analyzer for the understudied language Tati. This python program receives unconjugated verbs along with morphological tags and outputs a correctly conjugated Tati verb. Responsibilities included:

• Leveraged Pynini, a finite-state machine (FSM) library, to construct a cascade of string rewrite transducers
• Organized morphological verb data into spreadsheet

Graduate assistant

• Managed front desk operations including kitchenette resupplying, unpacking deliveries, and taking inventory
• Uploaded seminar recordings to Youtube and fulfilled conference room reservations

Lot Associate

• Worked independently and with teammates to assist homeowners and contractors with loading purchases into vehicles
• Served customers in a knowledgeable and friendly manner

Lead Catering Bartender

• Responsible for bar functions including organization, setup, and stocking, either independently or with other bartenders
• Using strong customer service skills, served customers standard and alcoholic drinks in a friendly and professional manner
• Trained new bartenders on Danford’s operating procedures