Jiangming Liu

Jiangming Liu (PhD 2017–2021) researched natural language understanding and generation under discourse representation theory, developing multilingual systems for formal machine-interpretable representations. He is now an Associate Professor advancing AI and language technologies.

PhD start and end years	2017 – 2021

What was your PhD research about?

My PhD research mainly about analyzing natural languages into their formal machine-interpretable representations under a specific linguistic theory -- discourse representation theory, and generate natural languages according to their formal representations for multiple languages, e.g., English, German, Italian, Chinese and et al.

What motivated you to undertake doctoral study?

My research interest is artificial intelligence, particularly for languages. Also, I like to read other researchers' ideas, realize and improve them, which bring me the sense of achievements.

What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?

I was majored in computer science and had no knowledge of linguistics. By reading many books about linguistics and communicating with my advisors and other professors in informatics, I learn a lot about linguistics and combine linguistics with computer science.

What are you doing now career-wise, and how did your PhD prepare you for it?

I am now a associate professor in University. I had no very clear plan for it. I did what I should do in my PhD study.

What’s one key skill or mindset you developed during your PhD that you still rely on today?

Academic research and writing skills

What advice would you give to someone considering a PhD in Informatics?

Keep in touch with the experts in your research area, because they could be reviewers of your submitted articles. Keep thinking and keep writing. Enjoy the research.