About Us

The Michigan Corpus Linguistics (MCL) unit is based in the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. On this page you find a list of current MCL team members (and MCL alumni) with short bio notes and contact information.

Contact

You can either email us individually (at the addresses below) or send email to the entire Michigan Corpus Linguistics team at . Our surface mail address is:

Michigan Corpus Linguistics Unit
University of Michigan
English Language Institute
500 East Washington Street
Ann Arbor, MI, 48104-2028
U. S. A.

Current team members

Dr. Ute Römer

Ute is the director of the ELI Corpus Linguistics Unit and in charge of managing the MICASE, MICUSP, JSCC, and Generation 1.5 projects. She received her PhD in English linguistics from the Leibniz University of Hanover (Germany) in 2004, and came to Michigan in 2007.

Ute’s research and teaching interests include corpus linguistics, phraseology, and the application of corpora in language learning and teaching. Her current research focus is on the creation of evaluative meaning in academic writing and on how corpus tools and methods can be used to identify meaningful units in specialized discourses. For more information about Ute’s research interests and a full list of her publications see http://www.uteroemer.com.

Ute’s email address:

Dr. Matthew Brook O’Donnell

Matt is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Corpus Linguistics Unit and involved in a range of projects including MICASE and MICUSP, contributing expertise in corpus compilation, annotation and the development of computational tools for analysis. Prior to coming to the University of Michigan, Matt was a Research Assistant in the School of English at the University of Liverpool where he was project manager for the Textual Priming Project (see www.lexicalpriming.org) and also taught in the areas of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis.

Matt’s research interests include the integration of corpus and text- linguistic methods, the study of language acquisition (especially the process of learning to write) in terms of lexical associations (following corpus-based theories such as Lexical Priming) and the application of techniques from machine learning and natural language processing to corpus linguistic tools and methods.

Matt’s email address:

Ying-Yu Chen

Ying-Yu is a Master’s student at the University of Michigan School of Information. She loves to observe the way people interact with technologies, and also how technologies influence human behavior. Having been a financial journalist for five years, she is especially interested in media/interface interactive design. As summer intern in the ELI corpus unit, Ying-Yu is involved in the MICUSP and Generation 1.5 projects.

Ying-Yu’s email address:

Katie Erbach

Katie is a senior undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, in the college of Literature, Science, and the Arts. She is concentrating in Linguistics and Spanish and is interested in the interaction of the principles underlying language acquisition, culture, and language use. She is currently volunteering as a research assistant and working on the MICUSP and Generation 1.5 projects.

Katie’s email address:

Danny Tzu-Yu Wu

Danny is a Master’s student at the University of Michigan’s School of Information with the specilizations “Incentive Centered Design” and “Information Analysis and Retrieval”. Before coming to the University of Michigan, Danny was a Teaching Assistant in the College of Management at National Taiwan University where he was responsible for managing the computer lab for the department of information management. Danny joined the MICUSP and the Generation 1.5 projects as part of his internship in the summer of 2010. Among other things, he helps with MICUSP Simple debugging and XML coding.

Danny’s email address:

Professor Nick C. Ellis (MCL faculty advisor)

Nick is a research scientist in the ELI and a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, His research interests include language acquisition, cognition, reading across languages, corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and applied psycholinguistics. His current research focuses on second language acquisition, particularly usage-based acquisition. For more information about his research and publications see http://web.mac.com/ncellis/.

Nick’s email address:

Professor John M. Swales (MCL faculty advisor)

John has been involved with corpus linguistics at the ELI since its inception in the mid 1990s. He was faculty advisor for the MICASE project, and has authored or co-authored several papers and chapters based on material from this corpus, including, in Research Genres, studies of the MICASE dissertation defenses and research group meetings. His current MICUSP project focuses on the use of ‘scare quotes’.

John’s email address:

Former team members

Geoffrey Ho

Geoffrey is a Masters student at the University of Michigan School of Information (SI) concentrating in Human-Computer-Interaction and Information Policy. Prior to attending SI, he received a Bachelors degree in Business Administration concentrating in Information Technology. Geoffrey is generally interested in how information is perceived on the internet and how information helps facilitate day-to-day work. During an internship last year under Dr. Römer, Geoffrey worked primarily on the early redesign of the MCL webpage and coding of MICUSP papers. Geoffrey is now a part-time research assistant in the Corpus Linguistics Unit.

Geoffrey’s email address:

Lucas Jarmin

Lucas is a Master’s student at the University of Michigan School of Information, working towards his Master’s of Science in Information with a concentration in Information Analysis and Retrieval. He received his Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature. His research interests include social network analysis, search engine technology, and natural language processing. Lucas joined the MICUSP project in the summer of 2009, and functions as a research assistant involved with XML encoding and paper classification.

Lucas’s email address:

Miranda Kozman

Miranda is a research assistant in the Corpus Linguistics Unit. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 2008, with majors in Linguistics, English, and German. Miranda has been involved in numerous projects in the ELI, including the transcription of the John Swales Conference Corpus, paper classification for MICUSP, and conference organization. In August 2009, she will start a teaching assignment in Philadelphia as part of the Teach for America corps, and pursue a Masters of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. During her teaching assignment, she hopes to start building a corpus of high school writing.

Miranda’s email address:

Emily Lin

Emily is a Masters student at the University of Michigan School of Information, with a concentration in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Emily is interested in user experience design and research and she has been involved in a variety of projects with a passion to develop intuitive interfaces and deliver seamless user experience. Emily is a research assistant in the Corpus Linguistics Unit and responsible for XML coding for the MICUSP project.

Emily’s email address:

Kelly Lockman

Kelly is an undergraduate at the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, concentrating in English Language and Literature and Spanish. She is currently involved with MICUSP as a Research Assistant working with paper classification.

Kelly’s email address:

Jesse Sielaff

Jesse is an alumnus of the University of Michigan, with a concentration in Linguistics and Physics. Jesse began as a research assistant in the Corpus Linguistics Unit in 2003, and is most recently responsible for the compilation of the MICUSP corpus and for IT and technical tasks in support of the various MCL projects. Jesse is also active as a software developer in the local Ann Arbor web development community.

Jesse’s email address:

Madison Stuart

Madison is a Masters Student at the University of Michigan’s School of Information (SI) with a concentration in Library and Information Services. Prior to attending SI, she received her Bachelor’s degree from Smith College with a double concentration in Mathematics and German Studies.

Madison didn’t know that she was interested in corpus linguistics before she started interning at the ELI Corpus Linguistics Unit, but now finds herself fascinated with the growing interface between language and computers and the implications thereof. Madison joined the ELI Corpus Linguistics Unit as an intern in the summer of 2009, and has since been involved with paper classification, XML coding, and website design for the MICUSP project.

Madison’s email address:

Edwin Teng

Edwin is a Master’s student at the University of Michigan School of Information, concentrating in Human-Computer Interaction and Information Analysis/Retrieval. Edwin is interested in how to design search interfaces and how to analyze and extract information. He has also published several papers related to linguistics and information extraction. Edwin is currently doing a summer internship in the ELI Corpus Linguistics Unit, helping with designing and implementing an online search interface for MICUSP.

Edwin’s email address:

Beilei Zhang

Beilei is a graduate of the University of Michigan, School of Information, with a master’s degree in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). She is broadly interested in interactive design and making information technology more user friendly. Beilei is currently involved in the ELI Corpus Linguistics Unit as a research assistant and working on the MICUSP XML coding and paper classification. With her professional HCI prospects, Beilei believes that MICUSP online has the potential to give users an overall excellent using experience.

Beilei’s email address: