Overview of TIGP

Academia Sinica established the Taiwan International Graduate Program (TIGP) in 2002 in collaboration with a consortium of key national research universities in Taiwan. The purpose of TIGP is to develop the research talent pool in multidisciplinary frontier fields and to enhance the innovative potential and academic standards of research in neighboring fields.
　

Doctoral programs offered by TIGP are jointly determined by Academia Sinica and national research university partners. All degree programs are inter-disciplinary by design. The areas covered include: physical sciences, applied sciences, engineering, biological and agricultural sciences, health and medical sciences, and humanities and social sciences.
　

Academia Sinica assumes principal oversight of the academic developments of TIGP. It provides intellectual leadership, research resources, as well as research and physical facilities. Participating universities provide the curriculum infrastructure as well as leading faculty members to complement the research expertise of Academia Sinica faculty members.

The TIGP Program on Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing

Computational linguistics is an inter-disciplinary area that has developed and matured over the past 40 years. It integrates scholarship from the two major component areas of linguistics and computer science. In addition, its current research methodology is highly dependent on statistics. It is considered an essential component of cognitive science. Its relationship with other cognitive sciences is two-fold: First, it offers the environment as well as tools for the simulation and evaluation of cognitive models of linguistic behavior. Second, and consequently, computational linguistic theories interact with other disciplines in cognitive science and receive feedback from them. 

The Taiwan International Graduate Program has been established to attract high-quality young researchers from all over the world in order to help jump-start the development of several frontier areas that are important to the future economic and social development of Taiwan. Specific graduate programs have been developed to enhance the innovative potential and academic quality of research in these and related fields. Within this context, the graduate program on “Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing” (hereafter the CLCLP program) is designed to offer specific training and research opportunities to Ph.D. students who are interested in the following areas: Computational Linguistics, Chinese Language Processing, Language as a Cognitive Process, and Language Archives.

Even though there are many highly competitive graduate programs in computational linguistics internationally, there is none in Taiwan. In addition, there is no academically competitive computational linguistics program specializing in Chinese Language Processing anywhere in the world. The research teams at the Institute of Information Science and the Institute of Linguistics at Academia Sinica have pioneered many leading technological and academic innovations in Chinese computational linguistics. Many international pre- and post-doctoral fellows have already come to work with our research groups on Chinese computational linguistics over the past nine years. They come from some of the most prestigious American universities, including Stanford and MIT, as well as from Canada, Germany, and Australia. Furthermore, our local computational linguistics society (Association of Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing), together with Academia Sinica, has organized the most prestigious international conference on computational linguistics: the 19th biannual International Conference on Computational Linguistics in 2002. This is the most important international conference in computational linguistics and it was the first time ever that it was hosted in a country outside of the EU, North America, or Japan.

The CLCLP program is a joint-degree program sponsored by Academia Sinica (Institute of Linguistics and Institute of Information Science) and National Tsing Hua University (Institute of Information Systems and Applications) and National Taiwan University (Institute of Linguistics). Within the CLCLP program, we  offer two tracks for students to choose from: the Human Language Technology (HLT) Track and the Corpus and Computational Linguistics ( CCL) Track. Each track has its own research emphases and graduation requirements. But the two tracks will interact and co-operate intensively with each other during the course of a student's studying. 

The Human Language Technology Track

This track focuses on how language sciences can be applied to create technologies that can improve the quality of human life, especially in the area of human communication and knowledge acquisition. Solid training in computer and information science is required in order to implement these technologies, while knowledge of linguistic theory is also essential in modeling and solving the technical issues. Other related fields such as psychology, neural science, sociology, semiotics etc, can also be integrated to help to create truly innovative HLT.

The Corpus and Computational Linguistics Track

This track focuses on scientific understanding of language as well as how computational tools and resources can help us in the scientific study of language. Comprehensive and in-depth training in linguistic theories is essential, as well the ability to use corpora and computational tools to explore linguistic data. Knowledge of neighboring disciplines that can help create broader account of language is also encouraged.