Charles Fillmore is one of the founding fathers of linguistics as it is practiced today. A professor emeritus of UC Berkeley, Chuck is also the director of ICSI’s FrameNet Project, which is building a lexical database, usable by both machines and humans, that describes the relationships between words in order to extract meaning from texts. The work requires the intellectual flexibility and passion for language that have marked his sixty-year career.
Professor Richard Karp has led ICSI’s Algorithms Group for the majority of its existence since 1988. Dick has just been named the founding director of an institute that will host research on theoretical computer science and its outreach to other scientific fields. The Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing will be funded by a $60 million grant to UC Berkeley from the Simons Foundation.
Many notable computer scientists work at ICSI, and in recognition of their contributions to computer science, we will profile some of our current scientists and visitors, as well as notable alumni, here on the blog. We begin with Roberto Pieraccini, ICSI’s new director as of January 15, 2012. A speech scientist best known for applying statistical methods to spoken language understanding and dialog, Roberto has 30 years of experience in research and development at corporate laboratories and technology companies in the U.S. and Italy.
Charles Fillmore is one of the founding fathers of linguistics as it is practiced today. A professor emeritus of UC Berkeley, Chuck is also the director of ICSI’s 
Professor Richard Karp has led ICSI’s Algorithms Group for the majority of its existence since 1988. Dick has just been named the founding director of an institute that will host research on theoretical computer science and its outreach to other scientific fields. The Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing will be funded by a $60 million grant to UC Berkeley from the Simons Foundation.