Tony Mullen

Research interests

• Statistical natural language processing
• Computer-assisted language learning
• Computer science pedagogy

Education

• PhD in Natural Language Processing, University of Groningen — Netherlands
• MPhil in Linguistics, Trinity College — Ireland
• BA in English Literature, University of Washington

Biography

Tony Mullen is a teaching professor at Northeastern University’s Seattle campus. He holds a bachelor’s in English Literature from the University of Washington and a master’s in Linguistics from Trinity College. He then received his PhD from the University of Groningen, where he worked on applying machine learning techniques to syntactic parsing of human language. Mullen carried out postdoctoral research in named-entity extraction for biomedical texts at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo. Since 2005, he has been a faculty member in the computer science departments, first at Tsuda College in Tokyo and then at the University of Puget Sound, before coming to Northeastern. At Northeastern, Mullen teaches web development, programming, and computer graphics.

His research has mainly been in the fields of machine learning for natural language processing and in computer-assisted language learning. In natural language processing, Mullen has focused specifically on statistical parsing, named entity recognition, and sentiment analysis. In computer-assisted language learning, his research has focused on the development of virtual environments to facilitate language learning. He has also written several books on 3D graphics software and related subjects.

Prior to joining Northeastern, Mullen worked as a software engineer in the logistics industry in Seattle and as a software/UX designer in digital media in Tokyo.

Mullen grew up in Vashon, Washington.

Recent publications