Dr. Megan Mroczkowski is a psychiatrist and Program Medical Director of Pediatric Psychiatry Emergency Service at NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital. In addition, she's Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. I asked Dr. Mroczkowski to share her work with WayCoolWomen.com readers because mental health awareness is increasing, especially among young adults. It was a pleasure talking to Dr. Mroczkowski and meeting her Fellows. I especially enjoyed her positivity. I hope her interview introduces readers to possible new careers and conversations about mental health. To learn more about Dr. Mroczkowski's work and path to helping people, visit: www.columbiapsychiatry.org/profile/megan-m-mroczkowski-md
Misheel: Can you explain what you do in psychiatry and forensic psychiatry?
Dr. Mroczkowski: I am so fortunate to have an amazing job which I love: I currently serve as the Program Medical Director of the Pediatric Psychiatry Emergency Service at the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian. I work with an incredible team of physicians, social workers, case manager, nurses, and rotating groups of child psychiatry fellows, psychiatry residents, and medical students. Each time a patient presents to the pediatric emergency department with a behavioral health emergency such as suicidal ideation, symptoms of depression, or agitation, our team meets with the patient, his or her family, and, with the consent of the parent(s), speaks to the outpatient providers (if he or she is in treatment), and his or her school. Often children and adolescents present to the emergency department in a crisis and have not seen or spoken to a mental health professional before. My hope is that our team provides compassion and hope to the patient and family during a very stressful time and acts as ambassadors for the mental health system. A patient may not need to access any mental health treatment again in his or her life, or may need to years later; my goal is that our team’s kindness and compassion make mental health treatment accessible and welcoming. I believe that mental health is just as important as physical health and that we need to take care of both of these realms for optimal health and wellbeing.
In addition to my training in Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry, I pursued an additional fellowship in Forensic Psychiatry. I’ve used this training to help assess patients’ risk in the emergency department and to do a small amount of expert witness work in the criminal justice and civil cases. For example, if a defendant is charged with a crime, he or she may have a psychiatric history. His or her attorney may ask a Forensic Psychiatrist to evaluate the defendant to help educate the court about how his or her mental illness may have impacted the alleged crime. I love this type of work because it allows the opportunity to teach the court about mental health.
Misheel: Between the age groups (young child, adolescents, adults, etc.), do you notice any differences and/or similarities in their minds?
Dr. Mroczkowski: I love working with all ages of patients, young children, adolescents, and adults, and I’ve noticed some interesting differences in their minds and behaviors. Young children are typically so open to talking and sharing their experiences and even a small intervention or short-term treatment can be so impactful on their life. Adolescents are amazing because they are learning how to think abstractly and what impact they want to have on the world. I love how hopeful and smart they are. Adults are wonderful because if it is the right time for them, they can make meaningful changes in their lives, and the lives of their families.
Misheel: How did you decide to pursue a career in psychiatry?
Dr. Mroczkowski: From a young age, I hoped to become a physician. During undergraduate, I became interested in the brain and human behavior. I was blessed to attend medical school and had the most wonderful time during these four years. Although it was difficult, it was a gift to learn medicine surrounded by incredibly smart and thoughtful people. In medical school, one rotates through core clerkships (Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, OB/GYN, Surgery, Psychiatry, and Family Medicine). I loved each of these clerkships, for very different reasons, and had a difficult time deciding between pursuing a career in Pediatrics, OB/GYN, or Psychiatry. I loved working with children and also loved having lots of time to talk with patients. Psychiatry, and child psychiatry in particular, affords the best of both of these worlds.
Misheel: What advice would you give your younger self?
Dr. Mroczkowski: I would tell myself not to stress as much about getting into the very best undergraduate and instead focus on how to learn and make the most of every learning opportunity. I have met so many incredible, successful, and talented people who attended all types and tiers of universities. The most important thing is to find teachers and mentors who are inspiring and smart and to learn as much as possible in all types of situations. For example, in residency, I worked with a research group studying Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I attended their weekly meetings and learned how they approached clinical research; there was no way to learn this other than taking a risk in asking to join their group and then taking in as much as possible during the process. This collaboration led to my first scientific paper, and I am grateful for their patience, guidance, and encouragement. They taught me the importance of perseverance and I try to pass this hope along to those with whom I work.
Dr. Anastasia Romanou is a climate scientist and physical oceanographer researching how oceans affect the Earth's climate and vice versa. Her work in oceanography is extremely relevant today, which is why I asked her to share her work and thoughts with WayCoolWomen. Dr. Romanou became interested in science and physics at an early age, and has worked hard to get where she is today at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. To learn more about where her drive, focus, and love for science have taken her, visit science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sed/bio/anastasia.romanou
Misheel: What led you to become a scientist working in applied physics and mathematics?
Dr. Romanou: When I was a teenager, I wanted to become a physicist. I studied physics at the University of Athens, which means I studied everything from classical mechanics to general relativity, wave mechanics…things like that. I decided to do a PhD in the United States because of better opportunities for work than in Greece. That's when I shifted from general physics to more applied physics. In addition to physics, I studied numerical analysis during my PhD and on my own because computer modeling is important to understand large-scale phenomena such as complex climate interactions. This is what I work on every day now, and although I'm a physical oceanographer, I spend a lot of time in front of a computer simulating the climate and the oceans to see how much the ocean is changing because of natural processes and because of anthropogenic [human based] impact on the environment, and to understand how the oceans change atmospheric climate.
Misheel: Can you explain what you're working on now in a way that people not in your field can understand?
Dr. Romanou: We’re in the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which was created in the 1960s to study planetary science, mostly astrophysics and astronomy. But in the 1980s many of the professors who worked here realized that our own planet needed to be understood better, so the Institute was gradually converted from planetary physics to mostly earth sciences. Now there are only a few people here doing planetary science. Most of the people here work on the NASA climate modeling program to produce current and future climate projections. My role is studying how the oceans are influenced by climate and how they influence systems, both of which constitute what we call "feedbacks". The ocean, atmosphere, climate and other systems feedback on each other. The ocean plays a very important role that was largely ignored until recently. Today we have more observations and better understand its importance, so we are able to model it. The climate model now simulates processes that take place in the oceans such as evaporation, sinking and deep water motions and biogeochemistry. They all affect carbon dioxide and how much the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and how much oxygen it releases. I use numerical models and that's where my applied physics and mathematics background comes in.
Misheel: What would happen if the oceans become unstable beyond repair?
Dr. Romanou: In addition to the ocean absorbing greenhouse gases, the ocean takes up heat from the atmosphere. If the ocean becomes so unstable that the climate of Earth warms by several degrees, that would be catastrophic for human life. Generally and under natural conditions the oceans are not static, they circulate and that circulation moves heat from where it's hotter on earth, for example, from the tropics to higher latitudes where it’s colder. That's why humans can live in higher latitude places like Canada and Britain and Russia. So if something happens to that circulation, which is called thermohaline circulation, and it stops carrying heat, then areas and people in higher latitudes will get very cold. With regards to the ocean, that is a major concern and there are many ways that this collapse can take place, for example as a result of melting the ice at high latitudes from heating the ocean too much and disrupting the ocean’s circulation. But there are other ways that the ocean can change besides climate change which can also be catastrophic for humans. For example, if the oceans become unlivable because of pollution, then we won't have seafood, or they will not provide oxygen to the atmosphere etc. The ocean is a physical system, and as an ecosystem, it’s crucial for the health of the entire planet, so we can’t disregard it.
Misheel: What advice can you give to young women about being involved in STEM or in other challenging careers?
Dr. Romanou: When I was a teenager, there were fewer women in academia and in research at higher levels. But as more women came into research science, we saw more and more women at higher levels. One thing that I’d like to stress to students and young professionals who read this is that they shouldn’t internalize that there are not many women at higher levels. Things have changed and are changing. At the same time, always remember that you are just as good as any other colleague, male or female. What matters 90% of the time is resilience and hard work, and 10% percent of the time it’s extraordinary features like extreme concentration or a mathematical mind or things like that. You don't have to be Einstein to become a scientist and reach high levels. Also, not all your grades have to be A’s. You can get a B or C sometimes and still learn and improve. Some students think, “I don't have all A’s in my science classes, so I can’t go into science.” That's not true. As you progress in your career, colleagues, mentors and support groups can help you. You need to love what you do, have an inquisitive mind and persevere. It’s important for young women to understand that a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is no different than any other career in this respect. I tell my children that they don't have to be straight-A students. But they do need to work hard, be dedicated, do extra reading and go the extra mile to learn. Eventually they can become A-level scientists!
Misheel: What is the most challenging problem or issue that you're working on?
Dr. Romanou: I would say there are a lot of difficult problems. I think the number one challenge that we have in our field is the need for more observations. For example, let's say we simulate the interactions between the carbon cycle in the ocean and phytoplankton but we don't really have observations to know what is right and what is wrong, so we hypothesize. It’s like trying to find your way in the dark. I try to base my models on observations that we have and try to guess what I should be doing differently or what other kinds of observations we need to make our models better. Another thing I’m working on is how the ocean is absorbing carbon dioxide and how this is going to change in the future and how soon. We know that the process is going to slow down, the ocean is going to stop breathing in all these harmful greenhouse gases that we humans emit into the atmosphere, but how soon is that going to be, and how critical will it be for the climate? This is the most interesting problem for me right now.
Misheel: What excites you about your work?
Dr. Romanou: What originally excited me about applied physics versus high energy physics or relativity, which was also one of my favorite subjects in college, is that it’s practical and involves going out and conducting experiments and helps explain the world around me. When I started my studies in the 1980s and 1990s, oceanography became much more popular in the civil sector and people started paying attention to it. It interested me because the ocean’s waters can be described by simple equations, and sometimes you can predict how sea water will move by using theoretical arguments and a simple pen-and-paper. So there is a nice mix of theory and application, which I thought was very exciting. And it can have an impact. When I started my studies, many people didn't believe in our work on climate change. But slowly they started to understand. Witnessing that has made me even more attached to the field, so I feel being a part of that understanding is what I find exciting about my work. Additionally, since we’re predominantly research focused at the NASA Institute at Columbia University rather than a teaching faculty, that means that I perform research and have discussions and meetings with colleagues, and have some interaction with young scientists and students. My work can be very specialized, and sometimes it can be difficult helping people without a high-level background in climate science to understand the research. However, researchers, teaching faculty and students could all benefit from more interaction by sharing findings and being able to think about the research in ways that more people can understand.
Send your thoughts about this interview or topic under 'Post a Comment'
 |
| WayCoolWomen.com's Misheel and Dr. Anastasia Romanou |
Misheel: What led you to become a scientist working in applied physics and mathematics?
Dr. Romanou: When I was a teenager, I wanted to become a physicist. I studied physics at the University of Athens, which means I studied everything from classical mechanics to general relativity, wave mechanics…things like that. I decided to do a PhD in the United States because of better opportunities for work than in Greece. That's when I shifted from general physics to more applied physics. In addition to physics, I studied numerical analysis during my PhD and on my own because computer modeling is important to understand large-scale phenomena such as complex climate interactions. This is what I work on every day now, and although I'm a physical oceanographer, I spend a lot of time in front of a computer simulating the climate and the oceans to see how much the ocean is changing because of natural processes and because of anthropogenic [human based] impact on the environment, and to understand how the oceans change atmospheric climate.
Misheel: Can you explain what you're working on now in a way that people not in your field can understand?
Dr. Romanou: We’re in the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which was created in the 1960s to study planetary science, mostly astrophysics and astronomy. But in the 1980s many of the professors who worked here realized that our own planet needed to be understood better, so the Institute was gradually converted from planetary physics to mostly earth sciences. Now there are only a few people here doing planetary science. Most of the people here work on the NASA climate modeling program to produce current and future climate projections. My role is studying how the oceans are influenced by climate and how they influence systems, both of which constitute what we call "feedbacks". The ocean, atmosphere, climate and other systems feedback on each other. The ocean plays a very important role that was largely ignored until recently. Today we have more observations and better understand its importance, so we are able to model it. The climate model now simulates processes that take place in the oceans such as evaporation, sinking and deep water motions and biogeochemistry. They all affect carbon dioxide and how much the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and how much oxygen it releases. I use numerical models and that's where my applied physics and mathematics background comes in.
Misheel: What would happen if the oceans become unstable beyond repair?
Dr. Romanou: In addition to the ocean absorbing greenhouse gases, the ocean takes up heat from the atmosphere. If the ocean becomes so unstable that the climate of Earth warms by several degrees, that would be catastrophic for human life. Generally and under natural conditions the oceans are not static, they circulate and that circulation moves heat from where it's hotter on earth, for example, from the tropics to higher latitudes where it’s colder. That's why humans can live in higher latitude places like Canada and Britain and Russia. So if something happens to that circulation, which is called thermohaline circulation, and it stops carrying heat, then areas and people in higher latitudes will get very cold. With regards to the ocean, that is a major concern and there are many ways that this collapse can take place, for example as a result of melting the ice at high latitudes from heating the ocean too much and disrupting the ocean’s circulation. But there are other ways that the ocean can change besides climate change which can also be catastrophic for humans. For example, if the oceans become unlivable because of pollution, then we won't have seafood, or they will not provide oxygen to the atmosphere etc. The ocean is a physical system, and as an ecosystem, it’s crucial for the health of the entire planet, so we can’t disregard it.
Misheel: What advice can you give to young women about being involved in STEM or in other challenging careers?
Dr. Romanou: When I was a teenager, there were fewer women in academia and in research at higher levels. But as more women came into research science, we saw more and more women at higher levels. One thing that I’d like to stress to students and young professionals who read this is that they shouldn’t internalize that there are not many women at higher levels. Things have changed and are changing. At the same time, always remember that you are just as good as any other colleague, male or female. What matters 90% of the time is resilience and hard work, and 10% percent of the time it’s extraordinary features like extreme concentration or a mathematical mind or things like that. You don't have to be Einstein to become a scientist and reach high levels. Also, not all your grades have to be A’s. You can get a B or C sometimes and still learn and improve. Some students think, “I don't have all A’s in my science classes, so I can’t go into science.” That's not true. As you progress in your career, colleagues, mentors and support groups can help you. You need to love what you do, have an inquisitive mind and persevere. It’s important for young women to understand that a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is no different than any other career in this respect. I tell my children that they don't have to be straight-A students. But they do need to work hard, be dedicated, do extra reading and go the extra mile to learn. Eventually they can become A-level scientists!
Misheel: What is the most challenging problem or issue that you're working on?
Dr. Romanou: I would say there are a lot of difficult problems. I think the number one challenge that we have in our field is the need for more observations. For example, let's say we simulate the interactions between the carbon cycle in the ocean and phytoplankton but we don't really have observations to know what is right and what is wrong, so we hypothesize. It’s like trying to find your way in the dark. I try to base my models on observations that we have and try to guess what I should be doing differently or what other kinds of observations we need to make our models better. Another thing I’m working on is how the ocean is absorbing carbon dioxide and how this is going to change in the future and how soon. We know that the process is going to slow down, the ocean is going to stop breathing in all these harmful greenhouse gases that we humans emit into the atmosphere, but how soon is that going to be, and how critical will it be for the climate? This is the most interesting problem for me right now.
Misheel: What excites you about your work?
Dr. Romanou: What originally excited me about applied physics versus high energy physics or relativity, which was also one of my favorite subjects in college, is that it’s practical and involves going out and conducting experiments and helps explain the world around me. When I started my studies in the 1980s and 1990s, oceanography became much more popular in the civil sector and people started paying attention to it. It interested me because the ocean’s waters can be described by simple equations, and sometimes you can predict how sea water will move by using theoretical arguments and a simple pen-and-paper. So there is a nice mix of theory and application, which I thought was very exciting. And it can have an impact. When I started my studies, many people didn't believe in our work on climate change. But slowly they started to understand. Witnessing that has made me even more attached to the field, so I feel being a part of that understanding is what I find exciting about my work. Additionally, since we’re predominantly research focused at the NASA Institute at Columbia University rather than a teaching faculty, that means that I perform research and have discussions and meetings with colleagues, and have some interaction with young scientists and students. My work can be very specialized, and sometimes it can be difficult helping people without a high-level background in climate science to understand the research. However, researchers, teaching faculty and students could all benefit from more interaction by sharing findings and being able to think about the research in ways that more people can understand.
Send your thoughts about this interview or topic under 'Post a Comment'
Professor Julia Hirschberg
is a computer scientist researching how language works, specifically
the connection between intonation and meaning. She's worked to encourage
more participation in computing. That's why I asked her to be the first
Cool Woman to share how she became a computer scientist. Professor
Hirschberg found her life's work when a lot of things happened by
chance, and because she is curious, loves learning and trying new things
and works hard. To learn more about Professor Hirschberg, you can
visit… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Hirschberg …and… www.cs.columbia.edu/~julia .
Misheel: How did you get into computer science? What sparked your interest?
Professor Hirschberg: I was initially a historian with a PhD in 16th-century Mexican social history. I began my career with a heavy teaching load at Smith College. My husband was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, so we were commuting a lot, which was very tiring.
In my historical research on Mexico, I had a lot of information from notarized records like birth and sales certificates. I was trying to map this data, so a fellow professor in the Computer Science department at UMass Amherst told me that my project was a Computer Science/ Artificial Intelligence (AI) problem. One of the professors had a graduate student who gave me some code, and I played with the code over the summer so I could learn to build the software myself. I had a lot of fun, so I got books on Computer Science from friends who told me that historians don't make much money. They suggested I go back to school for a master's degree and a job in Computer Science.
My husband was still teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, which had a good Computer Science department, so I took a leave of absence from teaching at Smith to take some courses at U Penn. I loved the courses. I didn't want to give up my job, so I went back to teaching while also taking math and logic courses from my fellow professors.
I thought about becoming a database person because some of my friends worked with databases and were doing well. But a course I took in AI that focused on Natural Language Processing (NLP) completely transformed my life. I knew that's what I wanted to do, so I got a PhD in Computer Science, focusing on language processing. I still like history, and when I travel, I always go to historical places, but I really like what I'm doing now.
It wasn't easy because going back to school after being a professor is strange, and I was a young junior professor. I stood up for myself when I had to, and it helped that the program at that time was open to people coming from different disciplines, and women were in charge of the natural language processing group.
After friends pointed out that I sometimes used a particular way of talking called the rise-fall intonation contour when I was giving presentations on my work on questions-answering, I wanted to find out more. I had a good friend who was a linguistics PhD student and together we looked at lots of examples and data, writing a paper together that was published in the best linguistics journal. People in the natural language group at Bell Labs invited us to talk to them about our work on intonation. On the way home from the presentation, we both said that Bell Labs was the most fascinating place we'd ever been to, and I wanted to work there, even though I hadn't really done that kind of work in the past.
I started to work on prosody [patterns of stress and intonation], and it's been the focus of my work ever since. Text-to-speech often sounds robotic and boring, so it needs proper intonation because intonation can show meaning. For example, in English, a question needs to end with rising intonation, while a wh- question or statement usually has falling intonation. Most people pick this up without thinking about it when they learn a language. But in text-to-speech it's a big issue because the text comes out of all kinds of speech, like news broadcasts and more. It's very challenging and I was the main person working on that for about ten years, so people would come and we'd work with different languages. It's still kind of an unsolved problem.
Misheel: Can you tell me more about the work you did in text-to-speech synthesis? Where and how is this technology used?
Professor Hirschberg: I did a lot of human subjects experiments to figure out different ways to predict prosody from text for text-to-speech synthesis. Then in the mid-1990s Bell Labs needed a new person to build a new HCI group, so they asked me since I had done a lot of relevant experiments earlier.
When Bell Labs started to change, a good friend at a university called me and asked if I was interested in a senior role. So I came to Columbia as a professor. One thing that has changed the field of spoken language processing more recently occurred when the voice recognition assistant Siri was released as an iPhone app in 2011. People started to realize that text to speech and speech recognition were important. But for me, it's been around for a long time. It's extremely useful.
Misheel: What does the group hope to find with its research, and what can be done with the findings?
Professor Hirschberg: We're working on text to speech and low-resource languages like Amharic because companies are not incentivized to create text to speech systems in these languages, even if there may be millions of people using them. For example, there are lots of Arabic dialects, but also Modern Standard Arabic, so there's no incentive for people to build systems which cost millions of dollars. For text to speech, you have to have cleanly recorded data in a sound booth and lots of it by a person who doesn't mind speaking in a very particular way all the time. This person with a professional voice will charge a lot. What we're doing now is figuring out how to take data that might be radio news or audiobooks and selecting parts of that data that are the most like how you would do a text to speech recording. So if you can put those together in a system, it can be done pretty much for free, so our goal is to enable people to build their own text to speech systems in their own languages. A lot of people who speak a particular language don't read it, so it would be good for them to be able to get information from the Internet.
Misheel: What is your favourite part of your career?
Professor Hirschberg: The research is great, the students are wonderful and the people you meet in the NLP community means that you have thousands of friends.
Misheel: What is the most challenging aspect?
Professor Hirschberg: Challenges can be having to raise money for research, you have to write a lot of grants. But I was really lucky my first year, and I've been able to share my expertise and learn a lot in leadership roles like chairing the Computer Science department at Columbia University since 2012.
Misheel: How did you encourage other women to begin a career in sciences and technology?
Professor Hirschberg: My friends and I were trying to make Bell Labs more diverse so we started talking to people in the senior leadership about the need to build a more diverse community. We finally convinced the vice president of research at the Labs that there were too few women at the Labs in general and also in leadership positions. One thing we mentioned to a fellow on the PhD recruiting committee (which was then all male) was that if the Labs wanted to hire more women the recruiters should meet with women's groups when they visited. He told us he thought the men would feel uncomfortable being the only male in the room. We were kind of astonished and said "but how do you think we feel every day?" and started laughing. The end result was, two of us were made department heads and both of us got on the recruiting committee and did exactly that -- met with women's groups at the universities we visited. Gradually things did change for the better at the Labs. It's one of the things I'm most proud of.
Send your thoughts about this interview or topic under 'Post a Comment'
 |
| Professor Julia Hirschberg and WayCoolWomen.com's Misheel |
Professor Hirschberg: I was initially a historian with a PhD in 16th-century Mexican social history. I began my career with a heavy teaching load at Smith College. My husband was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, so we were commuting a lot, which was very tiring.
In my historical research on Mexico, I had a lot of information from notarized records like birth and sales certificates. I was trying to map this data, so a fellow professor in the Computer Science department at UMass Amherst told me that my project was a Computer Science/ Artificial Intelligence (AI) problem. One of the professors had a graduate student who gave me some code, and I played with the code over the summer so I could learn to build the software myself. I had a lot of fun, so I got books on Computer Science from friends who told me that historians don't make much money. They suggested I go back to school for a master's degree and a job in Computer Science.
My husband was still teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, which had a good Computer Science department, so I took a leave of absence from teaching at Smith to take some courses at U Penn. I loved the courses. I didn't want to give up my job, so I went back to teaching while also taking math and logic courses from my fellow professors.
I thought about becoming a database person because some of my friends worked with databases and were doing well. But a course I took in AI that focused on Natural Language Processing (NLP) completely transformed my life. I knew that's what I wanted to do, so I got a PhD in Computer Science, focusing on language processing. I still like history, and when I travel, I always go to historical places, but I really like what I'm doing now.
It wasn't easy because going back to school after being a professor is strange, and I was a young junior professor. I stood up for myself when I had to, and it helped that the program at that time was open to people coming from different disciplines, and women were in charge of the natural language processing group.
After friends pointed out that I sometimes used a particular way of talking called the rise-fall intonation contour when I was giving presentations on my work on questions-answering, I wanted to find out more. I had a good friend who was a linguistics PhD student and together we looked at lots of examples and data, writing a paper together that was published in the best linguistics journal. People in the natural language group at Bell Labs invited us to talk to them about our work on intonation. On the way home from the presentation, we both said that Bell Labs was the most fascinating place we'd ever been to, and I wanted to work there, even though I hadn't really done that kind of work in the past.
I started to work on prosody [patterns of stress and intonation], and it's been the focus of my work ever since. Text-to-speech often sounds robotic and boring, so it needs proper intonation because intonation can show meaning. For example, in English, a question needs to end with rising intonation, while a wh- question or statement usually has falling intonation. Most people pick this up without thinking about it when they learn a language. But in text-to-speech it's a big issue because the text comes out of all kinds of speech, like news broadcasts and more. It's very challenging and I was the main person working on that for about ten years, so people would come and we'd work with different languages. It's still kind of an unsolved problem.
Misheel: Can you tell me more about the work you did in text-to-speech synthesis? Where and how is this technology used?
Professor Hirschberg: I did a lot of human subjects experiments to figure out different ways to predict prosody from text for text-to-speech synthesis. Then in the mid-1990s Bell Labs needed a new person to build a new HCI group, so they asked me since I had done a lot of relevant experiments earlier.
When Bell Labs started to change, a good friend at a university called me and asked if I was interested in a senior role. So I came to Columbia as a professor. One thing that has changed the field of spoken language processing more recently occurred when the voice recognition assistant Siri was released as an iPhone app in 2011. People started to realize that text to speech and speech recognition were important. But for me, it's been around for a long time. It's extremely useful.
Misheel: What does the group hope to find with its research, and what can be done with the findings?
Professor Hirschberg: We're working on text to speech and low-resource languages like Amharic because companies are not incentivized to create text to speech systems in these languages, even if there may be millions of people using them. For example, there are lots of Arabic dialects, but also Modern Standard Arabic, so there's no incentive for people to build systems which cost millions of dollars. For text to speech, you have to have cleanly recorded data in a sound booth and lots of it by a person who doesn't mind speaking in a very particular way all the time. This person with a professional voice will charge a lot. What we're doing now is figuring out how to take data that might be radio news or audiobooks and selecting parts of that data that are the most like how you would do a text to speech recording. So if you can put those together in a system, it can be done pretty much for free, so our goal is to enable people to build their own text to speech systems in their own languages. A lot of people who speak a particular language don't read it, so it would be good for them to be able to get information from the Internet.
Misheel: What is your favourite part of your career?
Professor Hirschberg: The research is great, the students are wonderful and the people you meet in the NLP community means that you have thousands of friends.
Misheel: What is the most challenging aspect?
Professor Hirschberg: Challenges can be having to raise money for research, you have to write a lot of grants. But I was really lucky my first year, and I've been able to share my expertise and learn a lot in leadership roles like chairing the Computer Science department at Columbia University since 2012.
Misheel: How did you encourage other women to begin a career in sciences and technology?
Professor Hirschberg: My friends and I were trying to make Bell Labs more diverse so we started talking to people in the senior leadership about the need to build a more diverse community. We finally convinced the vice president of research at the Labs that there were too few women at the Labs in general and also in leadership positions. One thing we mentioned to a fellow on the PhD recruiting committee (which was then all male) was that if the Labs wanted to hire more women the recruiters should meet with women's groups when they visited. He told us he thought the men would feel uncomfortable being the only male in the room. We were kind of astonished and said "but how do you think we feel every day?" and started laughing. The end result was, two of us were made department heads and both of us got on the recruiting committee and did exactly that -- met with women's groups at the universities we visited. Gradually things did change for the better at the Labs. It's one of the things I'm most proud of.
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