Marti Hearst facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Marti Hearst
|
|
|---|---|
Hearst in 2008
|
|
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley (BA, MS, PhD) |
| Known for | Hearst patterns |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer Science |
| Institutions |
|
| Thesis | Context and structure in automated full-text information access (1994) |
| Doctoral advisor | Robert Wilensky |
| Other academic advisors | Michael Stonebraker |
| Doctoral students | Cecilia R. Aragon |
Marti Alice Hearst is a well-known professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She teaches in the School of Information. Professor Hearst is famous for her work in computer science. She has made big contributions to how we use computers to understand language and find information.
Contents
What Marti Hearst Does
Marti Hearst's work helps computers understand human language better. She also designs ways for people to find information easily. Her research has changed how we search for things online. It also helps us understand large amounts of data.
Understanding Language with Computers
Professor Hearst did early work in an area called computational linguistics. This means teaching computers to work with human language. She helped create ways for computers to figure out if text is positive or negative. This is called sentiment analysis. She also worked on word sense disambiguation. This helps computers understand the correct meaning of a word when it has many meanings.
Hearst Patterns
One of her most famous inventions is called "Hearst patterns." This is a special computer program. It helps computers find relationships between words in huge amounts of text. For example, it can find out that a "dog" is a kind of "animal." This program is used a lot today. It helps companies organize information and build smart systems.
TextTiling
Marti Hearst also created a method called TextTiling. Imagine you have a very long article. TextTiling helps computers break that article into smaller parts. Each part is about a different topic. This makes it easier to read and understand long texts.
Making Search Easier
Professor Hearst's research also focuses on how people use search engines. She wants to make searching for information simple and effective. She helped create new ways to show search results. One example is the TileBars visualization. This showed users where their search words appeared in a document.
She also led a project called Flamenco. This project developed something called faceted navigation. You probably use it all the time! When you shop online, you might filter products by color, size, or brand. That's faceted navigation. It helps you narrow down your search quickly.
Books on Search
Marti Hearst wrote the first academic book about search user interfaces. It was published in 2009. This book helps others learn how to design better search tools.
Awards and Recognition
Marti Hearst earned all her degrees in computer science from University of California, Berkeley. She received her bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees there.
In 2013, she became a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. This is a big honor in the computer science world. It means she is recognized as a leading expert. She also joined the CHI Academy in 2017. This group recognizes top researchers in human-computer interaction.
Professor Hearst has received many awards for her work. These include the NSF CAREER award and IBM Faculty Awards. She also won Google Research Awards for her work on user interfaces. She has also received four Excellence in Teaching Awards. This shows she is a great teacher too!
Other Roles
Besides her research and teaching, Marti Hearst has been part of many important groups. She was the president of the Association for Computational Linguistics. She also served on advisory councils for the National Science Foundation. She is also a member of the Usage Panel for the American Heritage Dictionary. This panel helps decide how words are used in the dictionary.
