Research

My research area is in the area of computational linguistics, or natural language processing. I have focused my work in two major areas: computational morphology and semantic disambiguation.

To find out more about my work in computational linguistics, see:

• T. Clark, R. Wicentowski, S. Cro, M. Sydes, and B. Kahan, "Are estimands being used correctly? A review of UK research protocols". In Trials, 2025 (forthcoming).
• A. Schofield, R. Wicentowski, and J. Medero. Learning How to Learn NLP: Developing Introductory Concepts Through Scaffolded Discovery. In Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Teaching NLP, June 2021.
• T. Clark, R. Wicentowski, M. Sydes. A cross-sectional analysis of UK research studies in 2015: results from a scoping project with the UK Health Research Authority". In BMJ Open, 2018:8:e022340, doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-022340.
• R. Wicentowski. "SWATCS65: Sentiment Classification Using an Ensemble of Class Projects". In Proceedings of SemEval 2015, 2015.
• Y. Alhessi'16 and R. Wicentowski. "SWATAC: A Sentiment Analyzer using One-Vs-Rest Logistic Regression". In Proceedings of SemEval 2015, 2015.
• R. Talbot'15, C. Acheampong'16 and R. Wicentowski. "SWASH: A Naive Bayes Classifier for Tweet Sentiment Identification". In Proceedings of SemEval 2015, 2015.
• R. Collins'16, D. May'16, N. Weinthal'15 and R. Wicentowski. "SWAT-CMW: Classification of Twitter Emotional Polarity using a Multiple-Classifier Decision Schema and Enhanced Emotion Tagging". In Proceedings of SemEval 2015, 2015.
• S. Clark'13, R. Wicentowski. "SwatCS: Combining simple classifiers with estimated accuracy". In Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation, pp. 425-429, 2013.
• R. Wicentowski, M. Sydes. "Emotion Detection in Suicide Notes using Maximum Entropy Classification". In Biomedical Informatics Insights, Vol 5, Suppl 1, pp. 51-60, 2012.
• R. Wicentowski, M. Kelly'10, R. Lee'10. "SWAT: Cross-Lingual Lexical Substitution using Local Context Matching, Bilingual Dictionaries and Machine Translation". In Proceedings of SemEval-2010: 5th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluations, 2010.
• R. Wicentowski, M. Sydes. "Using Implicit Information to Identify Smoking Status in Smoke-Blind Medical Discharge Summaries". In The Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), Vol 15, No 1, 2008.
• G. Dahl'08, A. Frassica'09, R. Wicentowski. "SW-AG: Local Context Matching for English Substitution". In Proceedings of SemEval-2007: 4th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluations, pp. 304-307, 2007.
• P. Katz'07, M. Singleton'07, R. Wicentowski. "SWAT-MP: The SemEval-2007 Systems for Task 5 and Task 14". In Proceedings of SemEval-2007: 4th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluations, pp. 307-313, 2007.
• R. Wicentowski, M. Sydes. "Identifying Smoking Status From Implicit Information in Medical Discharge Summaries". In The i2b2 Workshop on Challenges in Natural Language Processing for Clinical Data, The Annual Symposium of the American Medical Informatics Association: i2b2 Workshop on Challenges in Natural Language Processing for Clinical Data, 2006.
• R. Wicentowski. "Multilingual Noise-Robust Supervised Morphological Analysis using the WordFrame Model". In Proceedings of Seventh Meeting of the ACL Special Interest Group on Computational Phonology (SIGPHON), pp. 70-77, 2004.
• R. Wicentowski, E. Thomforde'04 and A. Packel'04. "The Swarthmore College SENSEVAL3 System". In SENSEVAL-3: Third International Workshop on the Evaluation of Systems for the Semantic Analysis of Text, pp. 257-261, 2004.
• R. Wicentowski, G. Ngai, D. Wu, M. Carpuat, E. Thomforde'04 and A. Packel'04. "Joining forces to resolve lexical ambiguity: East meets West in Barcelona". In SENSEVAL-3: Third International Workshop on the Evaluation of Systems for the Semantic Analysis of Text, pp. 262-264, 2004.
• R. Florian and R. Wicentowski. "Unsupervised Italian Word Sense Disambiguation using Wordnets and Unlabeled Corpora". In Word Sense Disambiguation: Recent Successes and Future Directions, Proceedings of the 40th Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 67-73, 2002.
• D. Yarowsky, G. Ngai and R. Wicentowski. "Inducing Multilingual Text Analysis Tools via Robust Projection across Aligned Corpora". In Proceedings of HLT 2001, First International Conference on Human Language Technology Research (ISBN: 1-55860-786-2), pp. 161-168, 2001
• D. Yarowsky, S. Cucerzan, R. Florian, C. Schafer and R. Wicentowski. "The Johns Hopkins SENSEVAL2 System Descriptions". In Proceedings of SENSEVAL2, pp. 163-166, 2001.
• D. Yarowsky and R. Wicentowski. "Minimally supervised morphological analysis by multimodal alignment". In Proceedings of the 38th Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ISBN: 1-55860-731-5), pp. 207-216, 2000.

For my doctoral thesis, I developed a multilingual, minimally supervised morphological analyzer for Spanish, Portuguese, French, Catalan, Occitan, Italian, Romanian, Latin, English, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, Czech, Polish, Russian, Irish, Welsh, Greek, Hindi, Sanskrit, Estonian, Finnish, Turkish, Uzbek, Tamil, Basque, Tagalog, Swahili, and Klingon.

I have also published in areas outside of natural language processing:

• G. Toti, P. Lindner, A. Gao, O. Baghban Karimi, R. Engineer, J. Hur, F. McNeill, S. Reckinger, R. Robinson, A. Sollazzo, R. Wicentowski. "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Computing Science: Culture is the Key, Curriculum Contributes". In 2024 Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, January 2025.
• A. Danyluk, M. Jipping, R. Price Jones, D. Reed, B. Richards, and R. Wicentowski. "Small or Liberal Arts Colleges Adapting to CS2013: Making It Work". In Proceedings of 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, March 2015.
• T. Newhall, L. Meeden, A. Danner, A. Soni, F. Ruiz and R. Wicentowski. "A Support Program for Introductory CS Courses that Improves Student Performance and Retains Students From Underrepresented Groups". In Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2014.
• B. Tomasik, J.H. Kim, M. Ladlow, M. Augat, D. Tingle, R. Wicentowski, and D. Turnbull. "Using Regression to Combine Data Sources for Semantic Music Discovery". In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR '09), October 2009.
• R. Wicentowski and T. Newhall. "Using Image Processing Projects to Teach CS1 Topics". In Proceedings of 36th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, February 2005.

Education

• Ph.D. Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, 2002
• M.S. Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh, 1995
• B.S. Computer Science, Rutgers University, 1993

Selected Past Courses

• CS 21: Introduction to Computer Science (F'24, F'23, F'22)
• CS 31: Computer Systems (S'23, S'22, F'21, S'18)
• CS 33: Computer Organization (F'11, F'08)
• CS 35: Data Structures and Algorithms (S'04)
• CS 37: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (S'13, S'12)
• CS 65: Natural Language Processing (F'18, F'14, F'12)
• CS 67: Information Retrieval (S'09)
• CS 91: Software Engineering: iOS Development (S'11)
• CS 97: Senior Conference (S'05, S'03)