Noriko Tomuro, PhD.

Contact Information

College of Computing and Digital Media (CDM),
DePaul University
243 S. Wabash Ave.
Chicago, IL 60604 U.S.A.
Tel: +1 312 362 5218
Email: tomuro@cs.depaul.edu
Web: http://condor.depaul.edu/~ntomuro/

Research Interests

Natural Language Processing (NLP), Lexical Semantics, Information Extraction, Machine Learning, Text Mining and Analytics, Data Mining.

Specific Research Interests: My research interests are Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML), with a particular focus on the development of NLP algorithms/techniques which exploit lexical characteristics of domain text.  My PhD thesis, in 1999, was the mathematical proof of a Unification-based, syntax-semantics integrated parsing algorithm which I developed.  After that, I shifted my primary research focus to Lexical Semantics, in particular the problem of lexical ambiguity, and developed a method to automatically extract systematic polysemy (a group of word senses that are related in systematic and predictable ways) from WordNet.  Another research involved a clustering algorithm which derives clusters of word senses from highly polysemous words (adjectives in particular). Another work was a technique to automatically derive and visualize concept hierarchies from adjectives (using Kohonen SOM).   In recent years I have been working with domain experts to apply NLP techniques in other fields.  I worked with researchers in Game Studies and analyzed game reviews tp help them verify some of their research hypotheses.  I have also worked with medical research analysts to process and analyze radiology reports.  My latest work is on privacy pooicies -- I worked with experts on Privacy to build an automatic privacy policy summarization system (a practical application).

I have also supervised several doctoral thesis research, some of which are in the area of Image Processing (e.g. automatic classification of mammograms).

Education

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, DePaul University, April, 1999.
  • Dissertation: ``Left-corner Parsing Algorithm for Unification Grammars''
• M.S. in Computer Science, DePaul University, August, 1993.
  • Concentration: Artificial Intelligence
• B.A. in English Language, Sophia University (Tokyo, Japan), March 1985.

Professional Employment History

• Associate Professor, DePaul University, Fall 2005 to present.
• Assistant Professor, DePaul University, Fall 2000 to Spring 2005.
• Visiting Assistant Professor, DePaul University, Fall 1999 to Spring 2000.
• Lecturer, DePaul University, Fall 1996 to Spring 1999.
  • Taught programming and data structure courses (in C++).
• Research Internship, NEC Research, NJ. Summer 1994.
  • Generated English and Japanese lexicon for Principle and Parameter Parser from a broad-coverage machine readable dictionary EDR.
  • Advisor: Sandiway Fong
• Programmer, Furkon Inc., Chicago, IL. May 1993 to January 1994.
  • Developed client-server applications using Motif/X-Windows and embedded SQL in a unix network environment.

Honors and Awards

• Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN).  The U.S. Department of Education.
  • Capacity: Co-Director.
  • Awarded 2012 ($659,625), 2007 ($633,360), 2000 ($432,855).
• DePaul University Quality of Instruction Council (QIC) grant.
  • Capacity: Principal Investigator.
  • Awarded 2012-13 (paid leave), 2011($3,350), 2008 ($3,500).
• DePaul University Research Council (URC) grant.
  • Capacity: Principal Investigator.
  • Awarded 2010 ($3,498), 2007 ($2,550).
• Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN).
  • Capacity: Recipient (student).  September 1995 to August 1998.

Publications

  Refereed Journal Articles

• Zagal, J., Tomuro, N. and Shepitsen, A. (2011).
  "Natural Language Processing for Games Studies Research".  Journal of Simulation & Gaming (S&G), Special Issue on Games Research Methods. http://gamesmethods.wordpress.com
• Tomuro, N. and Lytinen, S.  (2004).
  "Retrieval Models and Q&A Learning with FAQ Files" (a book chapter).  New Directions in Question Answering, p. 183-194. AAAI Press / The MIT Press.
• Tomuro, N. (2004).
  "Question Terminology and Representation for Question Type Classification".  Journal of Terminology, 10 (1), pp. 153-168.
• Tomuro, N. and Lytinen, S.  (2001).
  "Nonminimal Derivations in Unification-based Parsing".  Computational Linguistics, Vol. 27 (2001), Number 2.
• Burke, R., Hammond, K., Kulyukin, V., Lytinen, S., Tomuro, N. and Schoenberg, S. (1997).
  "Question Answering from Frequently Asked Question Files:  Experiences with the FAQFinder System".  AI Magazine, Summer, 18 (2), pp. 57-66.

  Refereed Conference & Workshop Papers

• Tomuro, N., Lytinen, S. and Hornsburg, K. (2016).
  "Automatic Summarization of Privacy Policies using Ensemble Learning".  In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY 2016), New Orleans, LA. Best Poster Award.
• Pourashraf, P. and Tomuro, N. (2015).
  "Use of a Large Image Repository to Enhance Domain Dataset for Flyer Classification".  In Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC'15), Las Vegas, NV.
• Zhang, Y., Tomuro, N., Furst, J. and Raicu, D. (2015).
  "Combining Edge-based and Region-based Segmentations for Diagnosing Masses in Mammograms".  In Proceedings of the 29th International Congress of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (CARS 2015), Barcelona, Spain.  
• Pourashraf, P., Tomuro, N. and Apostolova, E. (2015).
  "Genre-based Image Classification Using Ensemble Learning for Online Flyers". In Proceedings of the 7th international Conference on Digital Image Processing (ICDIP 2015), Los Angeles, CA.  
• Zhang, Y., Tomuro, N., Furst, J. and Raicu, D. (2015).
  "Identifying the Optimal Segmentors for Mass Classification in Mammograms".  In Proceedings of the SPIE Symposium on Medical Imaging (SPIE Medical Imaging 2015), Orlando, FL.  
• Apostolova, E. and Tomuro, N. (2014).
  "Combining Visual and Textual Features for Information Extraction from Online Flyers".  In Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2014), Doha, Qatar.
• Tomuro, N., Tanaka, S. and Zagal, J. (2014).
  "Developing Soft Skills the Hard Way: International Student Game Projects".  RePlaying Japan 2014 (https://sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/replayingjapan2014/).
• José P. Zagal and Noriko Tomuro (2013).
  "Cultural differences in game appreciation: A study of player game reviews". In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG-13).  Best Paper Award.
• Kleper, V., Tomuro, N., Apostolova, E., Lytinen, S., Wang, L. and Mongkolwat, P. (2013).
  "Linking Radiology Reports to the Corresponding Pathology Reports Based on Biopsy Recommendations in Radiology Reports, Using Unified Medical Language System Concept Unique Identifiers".  In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of The Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM 2013), Grapevine-Dallas, TX.  Best Poster Award.
• Raison, K., Tomuro, N., Lytinen, S. and Zagal, J. (2012).
  "Extraction of User Opinions by Adjective-Context Co-clustering for Game Review Texts". In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Natural Language Processing (JapTAL 2012), Kanazawa, Japan.
• Kleper, V., Tomuro, N., Apostolova, E., Lytinen, S., Wang, L. and Mongkolwat, P. (2012).
  "Automated Extraction of Mammography Pathological Recommendations from Mammography Radiological Reports and Linking Each Radiological Report to the Associated Pathological Reports". In Proceedings of the 98th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA 2012), Chicago, USA.
• Apostolova, E., Tomuro, N., Mongkolwat, P. and Demner-Fushman, D. (2012).
  "Domain Adaptation of Coreference Resolution for Radiology Reports".  In Proceedings of the 11th workshop on Biomedical Natural Language Processing (BioNLP 2012), Montreal, Canada.
• Apostolova, E., Tomuro, N. and Demner-Fushman, D. (2011).
  "Automatic Extraction of Lexico-Syntactic Patterns for Detection of Negation and Speculation Scopes". In Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (ACL/HLT-11), Portland, OR.
• Zhang, Y., Tomuro, N., Furst, J. and Raicu, D. (2011).
  "Building an Ensemble System for Diagnosing Masses in Mammograms". In Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (CARS 2011), Berlin, Germany.
• Zhang, Y., Tomuro, N., Furst, J. and Raicu, D. (2011).
  "Building Multiple weak segmentors for strong mass segmentation in mammogram". In Proceedings of the SPIE Symposium on Medical Imaging (SPIE-2011).
• Apostolova, E. and Tomuro, N. (2010).
  "Exploring Surface-Level Heuristics for Negation and Speculation Discovery in Clinical Texts".  In Proceedings of the 9th workshop on Biomedical Natural Language Processing (BioNLP 2010), Uppsala, Sweden.
• Zagal, J., Tomuro, N. and Shepitsen, A. (2010).
  "Natural Language Processing for Games Studies Research".  Games Research Methods seminar.
• Apostolova, E., Neilan, S., An, G., Tomuro, N. and Lytinen, S. (2010).
  "Dangology: A Light-weight Web-based Tool for Distributed Collaborative Text Annotation".  In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2010).
• Zhang, Y., Tomuro, N.,  Furst, J. and Raicu, D. (2010).
  "Image Enhancement and Edge-based Mass Segmentation in Mammogram".  In Proceedings of the SPIE Symposium on Medical Imaging (SPIE-2010).
• Tomuro, N. and Shepitsen, A. (2009).
  "Construction of Disambiguated Folksonomy Ontologies Using Wikipedia".  In Proceedings of the workshop on The People's Web Meets NLP: Collaboratively Constructed Semantic Resources at the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-09).
• Shepitsen, A. and Tomuro, N. (2009).
  "Improving Diversity and Relevancy of E-commerce Recommender Systems Through NLP Techniques".  In Proceedings of the IADIS e-Commerce (EC 2009) Conference.
• Shepitsen, A. and Tomuro, N. (2009).
  "Personalized Search in Folksonomies with Ontological User Profiles".  In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference Intelligent Information Systems (IIS 2009).
• Shepitsen, A. and Tomuro, N. (2009).
  "Search in Social Tagging Systems Using Ontological User Profiles".  In Proceedings of the 3rd Int'l AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2009).
• Tomuro, N. and Lytinen, S. (2008).
  "Polysemy in Lexical Semantics -- Automatic Discovery of Polysemous Senses and Their Regularities".  NYU Symposium on Semantic Knowledge Discovery, Organization and Use.
• Kanzaki, K., Tomuro, N. and Isahara, H. (2008).
  "The \"Close-Distant\" Relation of Adjectival Concepts Based on Self-Organizing Map".  In Proceedings of the workshop on Cognitive Aspects of the Lexicon at the 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics (Coling 2008).
• Kanzaki, K., Bond, F., Tomuro, N. and Isahara, H. (2008).
  "Extraction of Attribute Concepts from Japanese Adjectives".  In Proceedings of the Sixth International Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'08).
• Tomuro, N., Lytinen, S., Kanzaki, K. and Isahara, H. (2007).
  "Clustering Using Feature Domain Similarity to Discover Word Senses for Adjectives".  In Proceedings of the 1st IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing (ICSC-2007).
• Tomuro, N., Kanzaki, K. and Isahara, H. (2007).
  "Discovering Word Senses for Polysemous Words Using Feature Domain Similarity".  In Proceedings of the Conference of the Pacific Association for Computational Linguistics (PACLING-2007).
• Kanzaki, K. Tomuro, N. and Isahara, H. (2007).
  "Extraction and Organization of Abstract Concepts that Categorize Adjectives From Corpora".  In Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Generative Approaches to the Lexicon (GL-2007).
• Tomuro, N., Kanzaki, K. and Isahara, H. (2007).
  "Self-organizing Conceptual Map and Taxonomy of Adjectives".  In Proceedings of the 18th Midwest Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science Conference (MAICS 2007).
• Tomuro, N. (2003).
  "Interrogative reformulation patterns and acquisition of question paraphrases".  In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Paraphrasing (IWP?03) at ACL?2003, Sapporo, Japan.
• Tomuro, N. (2002).
  "Question Terminology and Representation for Question Type Classification".  In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Computational Terminology (COMPUTERM02), held at COLING-02, Taipei, Taiwan.
• Lytinen, S. and Tomuro, N. (2002).
  "The Use of Question Types to Match Questions in FAQFinder".  In Papers from the 2002 AAAI Spring Symposium on Mining Answers from Texts and Knowledge Bases, pp. 46-53.
• Tomuro, N. and Lytinen, S.  (2001).
  "Selecting Features for Paraphrasing Question Sentences".  In Proceedings of the Workshop on Automatic Paraphrasing at Natural Language Processing Pacific Rim Symposium (NLPRS 2001), Tokyo, Japan.
• Tomuro, N. and Lytinen, S.  (2001).
  "Abstract Left-corner Parsing for Unification Grammars".  In Proceedings of the Natural Language Processing Pacific Rim Symposium (NLPRS 2001), Tokyo, Japan.
• Tomuro, N. (2001).
  "Tree-cut and A Lexicon based on Systematic Polysemy".  In Proceedings of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL2001).
• Tomuro, N. (2001).
  "Systematic Polysemy and Inter-annotator Disagreement: Empirical Examinations".  In Proceedings of the first International Workshop on Generative Approaches to Lexicon.
• Lytinen, S., Tomuro, N. and Repede, T. (2000).
  "The Use of WordNet Sense Tagging in FAQFinder". In Proceedings of  the workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Web Search at the 17th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-2000), Austin, TX.
• Tomuro, N. (2000).
  "Automatic Extraction of Systematic Polysemy Using Tree-cut".  In Proceedings of the workshop on Syntactic and Semantic Complexity in Natural Language Processing Systems at Language Technology Joint Conference, Applied Natural Language Processing and the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ANLP-NAACL2000), Seattle, WA, pp. 20-27.
• Tomuro, N., Alkoby, K., Berthiaume, A., Chomwong, P., Davidson, M., Furst, J., Konie, B., Lancaster, G., Lytinen, S., McDonald, J., Roychoudhuri, L., Toro, J. and Wolfe, R. (2000).
  "An Alternative Method for Building A Database for American Sign Language".  In Proceedings of the conference on Technologies for Persons with Disabilities (CSUN2000), Los Angeles, CA.
• Tomuro, N. (1998).
  "Semi-automatic Induction of Systematic Polysemy from WordNet".  In Proceedings of the workshop on Usage of WordNet in Natural Language Processing Systems at the 17th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING-98) and the 36th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-98), Montreal, Canada, pp. 108-114.
• Tomuro, N. (1998).
  "Semi-automatic Induction of Underspecified Semantic Classes".  In Proceedings of the workshop on Lexical Semantics in Context: Corpus, Inference and Discourse at the 10th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI-98), Saabruecken, Germany.
• Burke, R., Hammond, K., Kulyukin, V., Lytinen, S., Tomuro, N. and Schoenberg, S. (1997).
  "Natural Language Processing in the FAQFinder System: Results and Prospects".  In Papers from the 1997 AAAI Spring Symposium on Natural Language Processing for the World Wide Web, pp. 17-26.
• Tomuro, N. (1996).
  "Maximizing Top-down Constraints for Unification-based Systems".  In Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-96), Santa Cruz, CA.  pp. 381-383.
• Lytinen, S. and Tomuro, N. (1996).
  "Left-corner Unification-based Natural Language Processing".  In Proceedings of the 13th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-96), Portland, OR, pp.  1037-1043.
•  Lytinen, S. and Tomuro, N. (1995).
  "Steps Toward Real-time Natural Language Processing".  In Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Pittsburgh, PA, pp.  666-670.

  Tech Reports

• Tomuro, N. (1999).
  "Left-corner Parsing Algorithm for Unification Grammars".  Ph.D. thesis.  DePaul CTI Tech Report 99-006.
• Lytinen, S. and Tomuro, N. (1998).
  "Nonminimal Derivations in Unification-based Parsing".  DePaul CTI Tech Report 98-002.
• Tomuro, N. and Lytinen, S.  (1997).
  "Efficient Lazy Unification".  DePaul CTI Tech Report 97-006.

Conference Organization

  Workshop Organization

• 3rd Workshop on "Games and NLP" (GAMNLP-14), October 2014, Raleigh, NC.
  • Capacity: Main chair and organizer.
  • Planned and executed all aspects of the workshop (with two co-chairs).
• 2nd Workshop on "Games and NLP" (GAMNLP-13), November 2013, Istanbul, Turkey.
  • Capacity: Main chair and organizer.
  • Planned and executed all aspects of the workshop (with co-chair).
• 1st Workshop on "Games and NLP" (GAMNLP-12), September 2012, Kanazawa, Japan.
  • Capacity: Main chair and organizer.
  • Created the workshop.  Managed all aspects of the workshop (with co-chair), including CFP, formation of program committee, review assignment and local arrangements.

  Conference Program Committee

• Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) -- Program committee member.
• North American Association for Computational Linguistics / Human Language Technologies Conference (NAACL-HLT 2012) -- Invited Paper Reviewer.
• 8th International Conference on NLP (JapTAL 2012) -- Program Committee member.
• Midwest AI Conferences (MAICS 2010 & 2011) -- Program Committee member.

Teaching Experience

  Courses Taught

• CSC 215 Intro to Programming in C++ (undergraduate programming intro)
• CSC 310 Data Structures in C++ I (undergraduate data structures intro)
• CSC 312 Data Structures in C++ II (undergraduate data structures intermediate)
• CSC 211 Intro to Programming in Java I (undergraduate programming intro I)
• CSC 212 Intro to Programming in Java II (undergraduate programming intro II)
• CSC 383 Data Structures in Java (undergraduate data structures intro)
• CSC 393 Data Structures in C++ (undergraduate data structures intro)
• CSC 224 Java for Programmers (accelerated Java intro for graduate prerequisite)
• CSC 309 C++ for Programmers (accelerated C++ intro for undergraduate)
• CSC 404 Accelerated C++ (accelerated C++ intro for graduate prerequisite)
• CSC 415 Foundation of Computer Science I (discrete mathematics)
• CSC 416 Foundation of Computer Science II (data structures intro for graduate prerequisite; C++ and Java)
• CSC 417 Foundation of Computer Science III (data structures intermediate for graduate prerequisite; C++)
• CSC 578 Neural Networks and Machine Learning (graduate AI)
  •  Re-developed the course.  Lectures on major concepts in NN and ML, and student individual projects.
• CSC 594 Topics in Artificial Intelligence (graduate AI)
  • Topic: "Applied Natural Language Processing"
    • Created the course.  Term-long group projects on various NLP tasks and applications, including game reviews analysis.
  • Topic: "Text Mining and Analytics"
    • Created the course.  Lectures on basic concepts of Text Mining; Use of SAS Enterprise Miner and Python/NLTK.
• HCI 201 Multimedia and the World Wide Web (undergraduate web page development for non-majors)
• IT 398 Topics in Global Information Technology
  • Topic: "Computer Gaming and Animation in Japan" (in conjunction with study abroad)

  PhD Thesis Supervision & External Committee Member

• Yu Zhang, PhD Computer Science (graduated 2011) -- Capacity: Thesis advisor.
  •  Title: "Classification on Masses as Benign or Malignant in Mammogram Images"
• Emilia Apostolova, PhD Computer Science (graduated 2011) -- Capacity: Thesis advisor.
  •  Title: "Information Extraction from Radiology Reports for the purpose of Automatic Semantic Annotation of Medical Images"
• Payam Pourashraf, PhD Computer Science (on-going) -- Capacity: Thesis advisor.
  •  Title: "Multi-modal Classification" (tentative)
• Andriy Shepitsen, PhD Computer Science (stopped) -- Capacity: Thesis advisor.
  • Title: "Knowledge-based Information Retrieval and Recommender Systems Using Domain Knowledge and Natural Language Processing"
• Bill Horsthemke, PhD Computer Science (graduated 2010) -- Capacity: Committee member.
• Xuchang Zou, PhD Computer Science (graduated 2009) -- Capacity: Committee member.
• Bassam Hammo, PhD Computer Science (graduated 2002) -- Capacity: Committee member.
• Dmitriy Zinovev, PhD Computer Science (stopped) -- Capacity: Committee member.

  Study Abroad Programs

• "CDM Japan: Computer Gaming and Animation in Japan"
  • Capacity: Creator, Lead faculty.
  • A short-term (2-week) study abroad trip which visits gaming and animation companies in Japan.
  • Led the trip (a group of 20+ students) four times so far (2005, 2008, 2011, 2013). 
  • Planned and organized virtually all detailed aspects of the trip, including arranging visits with companies and various cultural activities, and working with a travel agency.
  • Also taught pre- and post-trip courses (two terms, in-class sessions).

  Student Group & Independent Project/Study Supervision (extra-curricular)

• Global Game Jam, Jan 2011 & 2012.
  • Capacity: Group member.
  • Led a group with another faculty and created a game (for both years).  Worked mostly as a communication facilitator between international group members.
• International Collaborative Game Development Project, Nov 2010 to Feb 2012.
  • Capacity: Executive Director.
  • Joint (and remote) game development with a Japanese gaming school (Trident School of Computers).
  • Led a group of 16 students (8 from DePaul, 8 from Trident) as the Executive Director (and a translator), as well as providing direction on production (development processes) and programming. 
  • Submitted the game (Matsuri) to Independent Game Festival (IGF) 2012 (http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2012.php?id=832).
  • Articles (and interviews):
    • http://computer.trident.ac.jp/news/archive/creative/post_53.html
    (in Japanese)
    • http://newsline.depaul.edu/Pages/japangamingproject.aspx
• Independent project/study of a total of 25 students (MS/BS in Computer Science) since 2005.
  • Capacity: Advisor.
  • Most projects were for one-term, and the topics were on Natural Language Processing or Machine Learning.

  Student Organization Supervision (extra-curricular)

• DePaul Japanese Media Appreciation Club (JMAC)
  • Capacity: Faculty advisor.  Fall 2014 to present.  Advised club management.  Attended club meetings and events.

  College &University Committees

• PhD committee (CDM).  1999 to present.
  • In addition to the regular duties as a committee member, I took a personal initiative in several activities, including:
    • Created an internal research symposium for PhD students ("CDM Research Symposium") in 1999, and organized annually (until 2012).
    • Created an open-house event ("CTI PhD Conference") in 1998, and organized annually (until 2005).
    • Designed and initiated a student progress tracking system on the school's intranet in 2004, and maintained it (until 2012).
    • Worked as the chair of the subcommittees for student travels and PhD office space.
• C++ Review Committee (CDM).  Nov 2010 to March 2012.
  • Initiated the committee to review and re-organize the existing C++ courses.
  • Gathered enrollment statistics, interviewed faculty teaching these courses, drove discussions and chaired meetings.
• Academic Program Review Committee (DePaul). 2005 - 2011.
• Liberal Studies Scientific Inquiry Domain committee (DePaul).  2013 to present.