Aravind Krishna Joshi (August 5, 1929 – December 31, 2017) was the Henry Salvatori Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science in the

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

department of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

. Joshi defined the

tree-adjoining grammar Tree-adjoining grammar (TAG) is a grammar formalism defined by Aravind Joshi. Tree-adjoining grammars are somewhat similar to context-free grammars, but the elementary unit of rewriting is the tree rather than the symbol. Whereas context-free gr ...

formalism which is often used in

computational linguistics Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, computational linguistics ...

and

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

. Joshi studied at

Pune University Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), formerly the University of Pune, is a public state university located in the city of Pune, India. It was established in 1949, and is spread over a campus in the neighbourhood of Ganeshkhind. The uni ...

and the

Indian Institute of Science The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is a Public university, public, Deemed university, deemed, research university for higher education and research in science, engineering, design, and management. It is located in Bengaluru, Karnataka. The ...

, where he was awarded a BE in electrical engineering and a DIISc in communication engineering respectively. Joshi's graduate work was done in the

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

department at the University of Pennsylvania, and he was awarded his PhD in 1960. He became a professor at Penn and was the co-founder and co-director of the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science.

Awards and recognitions

Guggenheim fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated d ...

, 1971–72 * Fellow of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

(IEEE), 1976 * Best Paper Award at the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1987 * Founding Fellow of the

American Association for Artificial Intelligence The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

(AAAI), 1990 *

IJCAI Award for Research Excellence The IJCAI Award for Research Excellence is a biannual award before given at the IJCAI conference to researcher in artificial intelligence as a recognition of excellence of their career. Beginning in 2016, the conference is held annually and so is ...

, 1997 * Fellow of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

, 1998 * Elected to the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

, 1999 * First to be awarded the

Association for Computational Linguistics The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) is a scientific and professional organization for people working on natural language processing. Its namesake conference is one of the primary high impact conferences for natural language proce ...

Lifetime Achievement Award at the 40th anniversary meeting of the ACL, 2002 * Awarded the

Rumelhart Prize The David E. Rumelhart Prize for Contributions to the Theoretical Foundations of Human Cognition was founded in 2001 in honor of the cognitive scientist David Rumelhart to introduce the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for cognitive science. It is aw ...

, 2003 * Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, 2005 *

Doctor honoris causa An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

of mathematical and physical sciences,

Charles University in Prague Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the oldest universities in the world in continuous operation, the oldest university north of the ...

, October 30, 2013 * S.-Y. Kuroda Prize of the SIG Mathematics of Language of the ACL, 2013

Awarded history

On April 21, 2005, Joshi was awarded the

Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and a center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and wikt:statesman, statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin ...

's Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science. The Franklin Institute citation states that he was awarded the medal "for his fundamental contributions to our understanding of how language is represented in the mind, and for developing techniques that enable computers to process efficiently the wide range of human languages. These advances have led to new methods for computer translation."

References

External links

Aravind Joshi's home page

Benjamin Franklin Award
{{DEFAULTSORT:Joshi, Aravind 1929 births 2017 deaths Linguists from the United States American people of Marathi descent 1998 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the IEEE University of Pennsylvania faculty Indian emigrants to the United States Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence American artificial intelligence researchers Computational linguistics researchers American computer scientists Indian computer scientists American Hindus The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science laureates Indian Institute of Science alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Rumelhart Prize laureates Scientists from Pune American academics of Indian descent 20th-century Indian mathematicians Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Fellows of the Association for Computational Linguistics Natural language processing researchers Presidents of the Association for Computational Linguistics University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science faculty People from Pune