Akhilesh Kakolu Ramarao

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Hello! I am Akhilesh Kakolu Ramarao. I am a Natural Language Processing Researcher, currently working as a Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the Department of English Language and Linguistics, Heinrich Heine University.

I currently work on Computational Morphology – supervised by Prof. Dr. Kevin Tang and Dr. Dinah Baer-Henney.

Research Interests

  • Computational Morphology
  • Low-resource NLP

Skills

  • Recent experience: Python, Bash, LaTeX, Scheme, Julia

  • Past experience: Haskell, Dart, JavaScript (AngularJS)

  • Frameworks: PyTorch, Flutter

  • Platforms: Arch linux, Ubuntu

Academic Positions

Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany

2021-present

Position: Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Department of English Language and Linguistics

  • Conducting research in computational morphology under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Kevin Tang and Dr. Dinah Baer-Henney
  • Teaching computational linguistics courses for BA and MA students
  • Responsible for IT administration for Slamlab

Industry Experience

CivicDataLab

2019-2020

Position: NLP Researcher

  • Developed Language Platform for Assamese, including Optical Character Recognition, Machine Translation system, keyboard, rich text editor, and parallel corpora creation
  • Conducted case studies on language complexity of Union Budget Speeches and topic modeling on Union Budget suggestions
  • Built crowd-sourced translation platform for COVID-19 information dissemination in local languages
  • Involved in developing a text annotation platform for sequence labeling of entities and relations in Indian court judgments

Skit.ai (previously, Vernacular.ai)

2017-2019

Position: Software Engineer

  • Involved in building multilingual chatbots and voice assistants.
  • Implemented conversation design framework, dialog management system, and user response prediction strategies

Ramco Systems

2016-2017

Position: Software Engineer

  • Developed a chatbot for Human Resource (HR) system, responsible for bug fixes, documentation, and feature implementation of machine learning components

Volunteering

Idu Mishmi Cultural and Literary Society (IMCLS)

2020-present

Role: Chief Coordinator

  • Managing partnerships and technology
  • Developed an android E-Dictionary application for the Idu Mishmi language

Lohit Youth Library Network

2020-present

Role: Volunteer

Education

Dayanand Sagar College of Engineering

2012-2016

Bachelor of Automobile Engineering

Teaching

Publications

  • Jeong, C., Schmitz, D., Kakolu Ramarao, A., Stein, A., & Tang, K. (2023). Linear discriminative learning: a competitive non-neural baseline for morphological inflection. In Proceedings of the 20th SIGMORPHON Workshop on Computational Research in Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology (pp. 138-150). Association for Computational Linguistics. https:// aclanthology.org/2023.sigmorphon-1.16.pdf

  • Kakolu Ramarao, A., Zinova, Y., Tang, K., & van de Vijver, R. (2022). HeiMorph at SIGMORPHON 2022 shared task on morphological acquisition trajectories. In Proceedings of the 19th SIGMORPHON Workshop on Computational Research in Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology (pp. 236-239). Association for Computational Linguistics. https:// aclanthology.org/2022.sigmorphon-1.24

Talks

  • “From Zero to Terminal Hero” at 32nd TaCoS conference, 2023
  • “Can Neural Networks learn human-like behavior when inflecting verbs? The case of Spanish” at the Five-Minute Linguist competition, Linguistic Society of America 97th Annual Meeting, 2023
  • “Modeling irregular morphological patterns using Transformers” at HeiCAD Lightning Talks, 2022
  • “Language Revitalization: A case for Idu Mishmi” at Microsoft Research India, 2021.
  • “Language Revitalization” at Navana Tech, 2021

Poster Presentations

  • Muschalik, J., Schmitz, D., Kakolu Ramarao, A., & Baer-Henney, D. (2023). Acoustic duration and typing timing - same, same… but different? Phonetics and Phonology in Europe 2023, Nijmegen, Netherlands.

  • Tang, K., Kakolu Ramarao, A., & Baer-Henney, D. (2022). Modeling irregular morphological patterns with recurrent neural network: the case of the L-shaped morphome. 13th Mediterranean Morphology Meeting, University of the Aegean, Greece.

  • Kakolu Ramarao, A. (2020). Analysis of POCSO cases in Uttar Pradesh. Agami, India, Bengaluru.

Grants/Awards

  • First prize at the HHU Legal Hackathon 2022. Team: Akhilesh Kakolu Ramarao, Phaedon Paschalis and Diana Schill.
  • First prize at the HeiCAD Lightning Talks 2022.
  • Hardware Grant. 20 × NVIDIA® JetsonTM Nano Developer Kits. NVIDIA Academic Hardware Grant, “FOSStering Digital Humanities through Accent Diversity & Conversational Devices”. Co-applicant: Kevin Tang
  • Education Grant. €9,424. e-Learning support fund, Heinrich-HeineUniversity Düsseldorf. “Interactive web-based review units for phonetics and phonology”. Co-applicant: Christopher Geissler and Kevin Tang

Conference/Workshop Organization

Consulting

XRI Institute

2020-2021

Vrook

2020-2021

Internships

Sense Infinity Technologies

Position: Full-stack developer

Maruti Suzuki

Position: Industry trainee