David Barbella

Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Programs/Departments

• Computer Science
• Data Science
• Digital Arts Applied Minor
• Pre-Engineering

Degrees

• M.S., Northwestern University
• B.A., Carleton College

Biography

Dave is interested in designing systems that allow computers to take advantage of natural language text. ("Natural languages" is what computer science people call human languages, like English or Spanish, to distinguish them from programming languages, like Python or C.) Understanding natural language allows computers to learn by reading things that were written for people, instead of requiring an expert to convert the knowledge into a form the computer can understand. It also makes it easier for people to communicate with a machine.

Dave enjoys working with students with all levels of experience in computing, both inside and outside of his areas of research focus.