Agustín Gravano Spoken Language Processing Group - Columbia University Office: Schapiro CEPSR 726 Phone: 646-775-6024 (office); 212-939-7147 (lab). E-mail: agusxx[at]xxcs.columbia.edu Mailing Address: Columbia University - Computer Science Dept. 1214 Amsterdam Avenue, Mail Code 0401, 450 CS Building New York, NY 10027

I am a Ph.D. student in the Spoken Language Processing Group at Columbia University, under the supervision of Prof. Julia Hirschberg. My main research topic is prosodic variation in spoken dialogue, aimed at improving the language models used by spoken dialogue systems, both for understading the user's input and for generating natural responses. In particular, I am interested in the prosodic realization of turn-taking phenomena (e.g., smooth switches, interruptions, backchannels) and affirmative cue words (e.g., okay, mm-hm, alright).

I earned my B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Buenos Aires in July 2001. In October 2006, I completed my Master of Philosophy in Computer Science at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University.

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Publications

• Spoken Language Processing

• A. Nenkova, A. Gravano, J. Hirschberg, “High frequency word entrainment in spoken dialogue”, in Proceedings of ACL/HLT 2008 (short paper), pages 169-172. Columbus, OH, June 2008.
• A. Gravano, S. Benus, J. Hirschberg, E. Sneed German, G. Ward, “The effect of contour type and epistemic modality on the assessment of speaker certainty”, in Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2008, pages 401-404. Campinas, Brazil, May 2008.
• J. Hirschberg, A. Gravano, A. Nenkova, E. Sneed, G. Ward, “Intonational overload: Uses of the H* !H* L- L% contour in read and spontaneous speech”, in Cole, Jennifer and Hualde, José I. (eds.). Laboratory Phonology 9, pages 455-482. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. December 2007.
• A. Gravano, S. Benus, J. Hirschberg, S. Mitchell, I. Vovsha, “Classification of discourse functions of affirmative words in spoken dialogue”, in Proceedings of Interspeech 2007, pages 1613-1616. Antwerp, Belgium, August 2007.
• S. Benus, A. Gravano, J. Hirschberg, “Prosody, emotions, and... whatever”, in Proceedings of Interspeech 2007, pages 2629-2632. Antwerp, Belgium, August 2007.
• S. Benus, A. Gravano, J. Hirschberg, “The prosody of backchannels in American English”, in Proceedings of ICPhS 2007, pages 1065-1068. Saarbrücken, Germany, August 2007.
• A. Gravano, S. Benus, H. Chávez, J. Hirschberg, L. Wilcox, “On the role of context and prosody in the interpretation of okay”, in Proceedings of ACL 2007, pages 800-807. Prague, Czech Republic, June 2007.
• A. Gravano, J. Hirschberg, “Effect of genre, speaker, and word class on the realization of given and new information”, in Proceedings of Interspeech 2006, pages 557-560. Pittsburgh, PA, September 2006.
• R. Sarikaya, A. Gravano, Y. Gao, “Rapid language model development using external resources for new spoken dialog domains”, in Proceedings of ICASSP 2005, pages 573-576. Philadelphia, PA, March 2005.

• Graph Theory

• G. Durán, A. Gravano, R. McConnell, J. Spinrad, A. Tucker, “Polynomial time recognition of unit circular-arc graphs”, Journal of Algorithms, Vol. 58(1), pages 67-78, January 2006.
• G. Durán, A. Gravano, M. Groshaus, F. Protti, J. Szwarcfiter, “On a conjecture concerning Helly circle graphs”, Pesquisa Operacional, Vol. 23, pages 221-229, April 2003.
• A. Gravano, G. Durán, “The intersection between some subclasses of circular-arc and circle graphs”, Congressus Numerantium, Vol. 159, pages 183-192, December 2002.
• H. Czemerinski, G. Durán, A. Gravano, “Bouchet graphs: a generalization of circle graphs”, Congressus Numerantium, Vol. 155, pages 95-108, December 2002.
• A. Gravano, “Study of Problems, Properties and Algorithms for Circular-Arc and Circle Graphs” (in Spanish). Licenciatura Degree Thesis, University of Buenos Aires, July 2001. Supervisor: Prof. Guillermo Durán.

Teaching

• At Columbia University

• Spring 2006: Spoken Language Processing (CS4706) - Graduate Teaching Assistant. Extraordinary TA Award (conferred by The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, Columbia University).
• Spring 2005: Spoken Language Processing (CS4706) - Graduate Teaching Assistant. Extraordinary TA Award (conferred by The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, Columbia University).

• At the University of Buenos Aires

• August 2002 - July 2003: Programming Language Paradigms - Graduate Teaching Assistant
• March 2001 - July 2002: Algorithms and Data Structures II - Graduate Teaching Assistant
• March 1998 - March 2000: Algorithms and Data Structures I - Undergraduate Teaching Assistant

Selected Talks

• “High frequency word entrainment in spoken dialogue”, at ACL/HLT 2008, Columbus, OH, June 2008
• “The effect of contour type and epistemic modality on the assessment of speaker certainty”, at Speech Prosody 2008, Campinas, Brazil, May 2008
• “Classification of discourse functions of affirmative words in spoken dialogue”, at Interspeech 2007, Antwerp, Belgium, August 2007.
• “On the role of context and prosody in the interpretation of okay”, at ACL 2007, Prague, Czech Republic, June 2007.
• “Effect of genre, speaker, and word class on the realization of given and new information”, at Interspeech 2006, Pittsburgh, PA, September 2006.
• “¿Por qué no habla mi computadora (todavía)?”, Charla de Borrachos, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 2006.
• “Downstepped contours in the given/new distinction”, at the Workshop on the Role of Prosody in Structuring Discourse, Berlin, Germany, October 2005.
• “The intersection between some subclasses of circular-arc and circle graphs”, at the 33rd Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing, Boca Raton, FL, March 2002.
• “Course-assignment problem”, at the VII Latin American Summer Workshop on Operations Research (ELAVIO), Viña del Mar, Chile, January 2001.

Miscellanea

Last updated: June 28, 2008