Welcome to Tara Azin’s personal page!

I’m a PhD student in Cognitive Science at Carleton University with a background in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computational Linguistics. My interest and current studies are in computational semantics, which is all about how machines can learn the meaning of language as humans do.

Meaning itself is quite controversial among us humans — we can be sarcastic, tell lies, and spread misinformation. Knowing the fact that even humans struggle to understand language makes the idea of machines deciphering meaning quite mind-boggling. Will machines ever understand meaning better than humans? In my PhD research, I explore this question alongside methods to improve machines’ understanding of human language.

I hold an MSc in Computational Linguistics from Sharif University of Technology (2011-2014), Iran. My thesis focused on authorship attribution and detection of writing style, more specifically analyzing the works of four renowned Persian poets Nima Yooshij , Sohrab Sepehri , Mehdi Akhavan Sales , and Ahmad Shamlou . Through the examination of stylistic features, I successfully attributed unknown poems to their respective poets.

I’m deeply passionate about all aspects of language technology and its profound impact on enhancing machines’ understanding of human language. My fascination lies in exploring innovative ways to impart our knowledge to machines, enabling them to assist us. Moreover, as a proud member of the Southern Kurdish community in Iran, I’m driven to create digital resources for this under-resourced language to ensure equitable access to language technology for all.