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Language technology education and research in Sweden

PhD education arrangements in general

PhD studies in Sweden consist of (1) the _PhD dissertation_ which may be either a monograph or a collection of refereeed journal/conference articles, and of (2) some course credits (one credit = one week's or 40 h worth of work). One semester full-time's study corresponds to 20 credit points and a complete PhD including the dissertation corresponds to four years (160 credit points). The course part of this varies greatly from department to department and ranges between 20 points and 70 points. A fairly standard norm is 60 points (i.e. three semesters or 1.5 years) in humanities subjects.

Students are expected to complete their PhD studies in 4 years (of full time work). A common pattern is for students to work on their doctorate 80% and spend 20% effort on teaching, administration or project work. In this way they can spread their PhD over five years. Students can choose whether they want to spread their work in this way. For example, they may choose to work 100% on their thesis during the last year.

As of February 2006, it is still unclear how the structure of graduate education will change in Sweden with the adoption of the Bologna system. It is not clear that the Government's current proposal will be passed by the Swedish parliament.

Graduate studies in language technology are offered by GSLT , the National Graduate School of Language Technology, and the following institutions

Chalmers University of Technology, Department of Computing Science
Göteborg University, Department of Linguistics, Department of Swedish Language
KTH, Department of Speech, Music and Hearing, NADA
Linköping University, Department of Computer and Information Science
Lund University, Department of Linguistics and Phonetics
Stockholm University, Department of Linguistics
Uppsala university, Department of Linguistics and Philology
Växjö university, School of Mathematics and Systems Engineering

GSLT

GSLT is a national Graduate school of language technology currently with about 40 PhD students. The school's budget is current 12 MSEK a year provided originally as additional funds from the Swedish government to Göteborg University. We currently have permission to plan a budget to 2012 with an intake of 5 students per year with full funding, together with 3 students with external funding and partial support from GSLT during 2005-08.

GSLT has an Academic Board which approves the curriculum and selects the PhD students to be enrolled. We offer about four courses per semester. Courses are open to other qualified graduate students in the Nordic area and funding for this has been provided by GENST-NET. Courses are organised into three levels and are normally team-taught by lecturers from various institutions and guest lecturers from outside Sweden. GSLT students are involved in planning which courses should be offered.

Each student in GSLT is registered in his/her home university as a PhD student, normally has a primary supervisor there and graduates according to regulations of that university. Students must also simultaneously meet course requirements for GSLT and their home institution. For the PhD students GSLT means (a) availability of courses relevant to the PhD studies, (b) a community of PhD students with similar interests who can collaborate and support each other, and (c) easy access to secondary supervisors. It also makes it easier for students to change supervisors or even universities within GSLT.

Undergraduate education

Undergraduate studies in language technology are conducted in these locations in Sweden today

Göteborg University

Educational Programme in Computational Linguistics

University of Skövde

Datalingvistiskt program 7576

KTH

Speech Technology

Linköping University

Kognitionvetenskap 9192

Lund University

Språkteknologiprogrammet 99100

Stockholm University

Computational Linguistics

Uppsala University

Språkteknologiprogrammet 113114

Växjö University

Datavetenskap 121122

Of these Göteborg and Uppsala offer full four year programmes leading to a masters degree in Computational Linguistics and Language Technology respectively. The other institutions offer varying degrees of specialisation (up to two years).

Both graduate and undergraduate education will be reorganised in Sweden in accordance with the Bologna model.

Research in language technology

Vinnova (the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems) has financed a research programme in language technology. The latest programme (about 7 mSEK in total) began in 2001 and finished at the end of 2004. There are currently no plans for a continuation. Language Technology is funded in other programmes, e.g. by the Swedish Research Council.

Some of the areas of research and expertise:

aids for people with special needs: Göteborg (Linguistics), KTH (Centre for Speech Technology), Uppsala (Linguistics)
authoring tools: Göteborg (Linguistics), Uppsala (Linguistics)
automatic document classification: Borås (Library and Information Science)
corpus collection and processing: Göteborg (Linguistics, Swedish Language), KTH (Centre for Speech Technology), Linköping (Computer Science), Skövde (Communication and Information), Stockholm (Linguistics), Uppsala (Linguistics), Växjö (Computer Science)
computer assisted language learning: Göteborg (Swedish Language), KTH (Centre for Speech Technology), Skövde (Communication and Information), Uppsala (Linguistics)
dialogue systems: Göteborg (Linguistics), KTH ( Centre for Speech Technology), Linköping (Computer Science), Telia Sonera
grammar development: Chalmers (Computing Science), Göteborg (Linguistics, Swedish Language), Linköping (Computer Science), SICS, Växjö (Computer Science)
information extraction: Borås (Library and Information Science), KTH (Nada), SICS, Skövde (Communication and Information), Linköping (Computer Science), Stockholm (Computer and Systems Sciences, Linguistics)
information retrieval: Borås (Library and Information Science)
lexicon development: Chalmers (Computing Science), Göteborg (Swedish Language), Skövde (Communication and Information)
machine learning: Göteborg (Linguistics), KTH (Centre for Speech Technology), Växjö (Computer Science)
morphology: Chalmers (Computing Science), Göteborg (Swedish Language), Stockholm (Linguistics), Växjö (Computer Science)
multimodal processing: Göteborg (Linguistics), KTH (Centre for Speech Technology), Linköping (Computer Science)
prediction: KTH (Centre for Speech Technology), Uppsala (Linguistics)
semantics: Chalmers (Computing Science), Göteborg (Linguistics, Philosophy), Skövde (Communication and Information), Stockholm (Linguistics)
speech technology: KTH (Centre for Speech Technology), Linköping (Computer Science), Lund (Linguistics and Phonetics), Skövde (Communication and Information), Telia Sonera
statististical methods in NLP: Växjö (Computer Science)
translation: Chalmers (Computing Science), Linköping (Computer Science), Lund (Linguistics and Phonetics), Skövde (Communication and Information), Uppsala (Linguistics)