Shaobin Xu
PhD Student
Education
- ME, Tongji University - China
- BE, Tongji University - China
About Me
- Hometown: Fuzhou, Fujian, China
- Field of Study: Computer Science
- PhD Advisor: David Smith
Biography
Shaobin Xu is a PhD student in the Computer Science program at Northeastern University’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences, advised by Professor David Smith. Shaobin studies and researches natural language processing, having earned a bachelor's and master's degree in engineering from Tongji University in Shanghai, China. Shaobin worked at a gaming company before coming to Northeastern.
What are the specifics of your graduate education (thus far)?
I earned my master's degree in Tongji University, focusing on new media art. After a year of employment in a game company, I came to Northeastern for a PhD degree.
What are your research interests?
I am interested in natural language processing and computational linguistics. I did not picture myself as a PhD student when I was an undergraduate. But after experiencing both research and an industry internship, I decided that research was my niche, and so I decided to go for a PhD.
What’s one problem you’d like to solve with your research/work?
I would like to apply the techniques of natural language processing and machine learning to help better deal with the large set of texts in daily life.
What aspect of what you do is most interesting?
I think the most fascinating aspect of natural language is the ambiguity and uncertainty that it brings. I hope my work will be able to make the understanding of the texts in the perspective of machine more effective.
What are your research or career goals, going forward?
I have not yet decided.
Where did you grow up or spend your most defining years?
I grew up in Fuzhou, a southeastern city of China. I moved to Shanghai for my bachelor’s and master’s degrees and spent a significant amount of time there.
Where did you study for your undergraduate degree?
I studied at Tongji University. Shanghai had always been a city that I wanted to explore and to live in for a couple of years.