Borui Zhang: Home

Self-intro:

I'm the natural language processing (NLP) specialist at Academic Research Consulting and Services (ARCS) department at Health Science Center Library (HSCL). I offer NLP consultations (e.g., training methods, datasets, papers, theories, etc.) and do collaborative research that uses NLP in different domains. My background is in theoretical linguistics and computer science, and I'm interested in research for a better understanding of human languages and NLP-related applications. One sets the foundations which inspire me to explore the human capacity of language, and the other empowers me with more tools for conducting research. I'm grateful that I had some opportunities to work on many different languages using machine learning methods such as Nepal Bhasa, Cantonese, Mandarin, English, and Korean.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Linguistics (Minor in Computer Science) - University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
• M.A. in Linguistics - University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
• B.S. in Educational Technology - Tianjin Foreign Studies University, China

Teaching: 

IDS 2935 (Quest 2) - Fall 2023: Making Sense: Understanding the World with Data and AI 

(Student presentation snaps)

GMS 5909 - Fall 2023, Fall 2022: Finding Biomedical Research Information and Communicating Science

Guest Lecture - PHC 3793 - Fall 2023, Fall 2022: Higher Thinking for Healthy Humans: AI in Healthcare and Public Health

Guest Lecture - BME 6938 - Spring 2023: Multimodal Data Mining

Library AI Research: 

Library Graduate Internship Program: Collaborating with a UF graduate student intern and a faculty member from the Florida Museum of Natural History, we are leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) and Computer Vision (CV) techniques to enhance the understanding and interpretation of natural history image collections.

Publications: 

• Getting to Know Named Entity Recognition: Better Information Retrieval Med Ref Serv Q 2024
• Classifying early infant feeding status from clinical notes using natural language processing and machine learning Scientific Report, 2024 (co-author)
• Prompt Engineers or Librarians? An Exploration Med Ref Serv Q. 2023
• ChatGPT, an Opportunity to Understand More about Language Models Med Ref Serv Q. 2023 Apr-Jun; 42(2)
• Machine learning and natural language processing for classifying infant feeding status from clinical notes AMIA 2022 Annual Symposium (co-author)
• Shallow Parsing for Nepal Bhasa Complement Clauses In Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages, Association for Computational Linguistics. 2022 (co-author)
• The Multiple Mechanisms for Mandarin Sluices Proceedings of GLOW-in-Asia, 2019 (co-author)
• Embedding, Covert Movement, and Intervention in Newari In Proceedings of LSA 2018 (co-author)
• Entropy Reduction Prediction on Mandarin Chinese Relative Clauses Processdings of 2016 Buckeye East Asian Linguistics Forum 2
• Adverbial phrase placements in L1-Chinese ESL learners’ writing Linguistic Portfolios, 4(1), 9. 2015 (co-author)

I can help you with

• AI Consultations: Assist students, faculty, and staff in locating NLP and machine learning resources, evaluating the appropriateness of proposed AI methods or tools for research, and advising on language models and data collection strategies for AI research.
• Creating AI Learning Materials: Develop courses and create tailored tutorials and materials in AI.

• Research Collaboration: I am interested in areas such as prompt engineering with large models (e.g., LLMs and multimodal models), information retrieval, and vector-based data representations in various fields, including art and humanities, medical advancements, and agricultural innovations.