Bolette Sandford Pedersen

Bolette Sandford Pedersen

Cand.mag. et ph.d.

  • Emil Holms Kanal 2, 2300 København S, 22 Bygning 22 (Afsnit 1), 22-3-54

  • Emil Holms Kanal 2

    2300 København S

Personal profile

Short presentation

I am a professor in language technology and computational linguistics, and I am particularly focused on the development of Danish resources for language technology and language-centric AI. I lead the research group Language Technology and computational linguistics and the Centre for Language Technology.

Current research

Teaching

  • Teaching at bachelor level in "It og Sprog" (It and Language)
  • Supervision at the MSc It & Cognition within language technology topics in particular lexical semantics and computational lexicography

Primary fields of research

  • Language technology support for Danish
  • Lexical semantics and semantic processing
  • Linguistic ontology/wordnets
  • Computational lexicography

 

 

CV

Education and employment:

  • Master in Spanish and computational linguistics at University of Copenhagen 1989.
  • PhD in computational linguistics University of Copenhagen 1998.
  • 1989 - 2004 The EUROTRA Project, University of Copenhagen,
  • 1998 - 2004 External lecturer at Copenhagen Business School
  • 1999 - 2010 Senior Researcher at Centre for Language Technology, University of Copenhagen
  • 2010 Professor in language technology and computational linguistics at Centre for Language Technology, University of Copenhagen
  • 2015 - 2017 Head of Department at Department of Nordic Research, University of Copenhagen 
  • 2017 -, Deputy Head of Department of Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics
  • 2017 -, Centre Leader of Centre for Language Technology at Nordic Studies and Linguistics

Main research areas: language technology, NLP, benchmark data for Danish LT, semantic processing, lexical semantics, linguistic ontologies, language policy wrt language technology.

Research funding, management, supervision etc.

Funding record: 2023: (PI, grant holder). “Compiling a Danish benchmark dataset for assessing reasoning capabilities of large language models”. Carlsberg Foundation. Grant: DKK 804,533. 2020: (Co-PI and grant holder with Karen Skovgaard-Petersen, The Danish Society for Language and Literature, and Thomas Hestbæk Anderssen, The Danish Language Council). “Det Centrale OrdRegiser”. The Agency for Digital Government. Grant: DKK 5,189,970. 2018: (Co-PI and grant holder with Karen Skovgaard-Petersen, The Danish Society for Language and Literature).”Digital udgivelse og sprogteknologisk anvendelse af Den Danske Begrebsordbog – DanNet2”. Carlsberg Foundation. Grant: DKK 1,964,790. 2018: (Partner, National coordinator). ”ELEXIS”, EU-H2020. Grant (to UCPH): DKK 1,686,727. 2013: (Principal Investigator and grant holder). “Semantic Processing across Domains”. The Danish Research Council (DFF-1319-00123). Grant: DKK 5,700,000. 2011: (Partner, National coordinator for Denmark). “MetaNord”. ICT PSP Programme, Grant Agreement: No 270899. Grant (to UCPH): DKK 1,247,197. 2009: (Partner, National coordinator for Denmark). “CLARA”. Initial Training Network in the Marie Curie Actions financed by the EC under FP7. Grant Agreement Number 238405. Grant: EUR 3,613,919. 2004: (PI, grant holder): ”Leksikalsk semantisk ordnet for dansk”. Young Researchers’ Program (now ‘Sapere Aude’), The Danish Research Foundation. Grant: DKK 3,000,000. 2000: (Coordinator and grant holder). ”SPINN - SProgteknologi og INformationssøgning i Norden”. NorFA– Nordisk Forskningsuddannelsesakademi.

Project management of external projects: National coordinator of EU projects: ELEXIS, H2020 (2018-2023)(co-leader), eTranslation TermBank CEF (2017-2019), European Language Equality (2019-2022), European Language Resource Coordination CEF (2018-2022), CLARA - Common Language Resources and their Applications, Marie Curie ITN (2011-2014), META-NORD, EU project (2011-2013), SIMPLE-DK (1998-2000). Coordinator of Nordic network: SPINN-Research Network (2001-2004).

Leader of national, cross-institutional research projects: The Benchmark Project, The Carlsberg Foundation (2024-2026), Det Centrale OrdRegister, The Danish Agency for Digitisation (2021-2023) (co-leader), Semantic Processing across Domains (“Forskningsprojekt 2”) (2013-2017) (Danish Research Council): DanNet – et leksikalsk semantisk ordnet for dansk, “Yngre Forskere” (2005-2008).

Selected scientific committees and reviews: Chair of Sprogteknologisk Konference 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 with the Danish Agency for Digital Government. Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), Coling, SEM+, Euralex Congress, Global WordNet Conference,  International Congresses of Language Resources and Evaluation, International Conference on Terminology and Knowledge Engineering, Euralex, eLex, Program Chair for NodaLida 2011, Riga, Latvia. Subject editor for lex.dk (computational linguistics and language technology). Selected review tasks: The EU Commission, Det Norske Forskningsministerium, Islandske Sprogteknologifond, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, The Velux Foundation, LRE and IJL Journals.  

International boards: Member of the Management Committee of the Cost Action CA21167 - Universality, Diversity and Idiosyncrasy in Language Technology (UniDive) (2024-). Global WordNet Association 2008-2023. President of Northern European Association of Language Technology 2014-2016 (board member 2012-2014), Rikbankens Jubileumsfond’s Program Committee, Sweden, 2018-2021.                                                                                                                                                              

Selected invited talks: ’Om sprogforståelse i danske sprogmodeller’, Digitaliseringsstyrelsen, September 2024. ’Det danske sprog i store sprogmodeller’, Folkteingstidende, September 2024. ’Towards a Semantic Reasoning Benchmark’, Center for Language Generation and AI, Århus. ’Sprog- og kulturbias i LLMs’, The Danish Language Council, May 2024. ‘Sproglige og kulturelle bias i store sprogmodeller’, Faglig Fredag, Lund&Bendsen A/S October 2023. ’Lexical Conceptual Resources in the Era of Neural Language Models’, Lars Borin's Symposium, Språkbanken. November. 2022. ‘The Role of Lexical Conceptual Resources in the Era of Language Models’, Institute for Bulgarian Language November 2022. Lexical-Conceptual Resources in the Era of Neural Language Models:  at CLIB '22: Computational Linguistics in Bulgaria 9 sep. 2022. LexicoNordica 2022 i Falsterbo, Sweden, National AI strategy and LT in Denmark,  at Nordisk Ministerråds Konference om sprogteknologi for små sprog i Norden, Stockholm 2020, METAFORUM 2019, Brussels, Belgium, Applied Linguistics Conference 2019 Tallinn, Estonia, Konference om Leksikografi i Norden 2017, Reykjavik, Iceland, Global Wordnet Conference 2014, Tartu, Estonia, Euralex Conference 2013, Oslo, Norway.

Supervision of more than 20 master theses and of five PhD students.

Keywords

  • Faculty of Humanities
  • language technology
  • computational lexicography
  • lexical semantics
  • wordnets and linguistic ontologies

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

Recent external collaboration on country/territory level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots or