Washington and Lee University
Simon Levy came to Washington and Lee in 2002. He is also the faculty advisor to W&L Hillel.
Ph.D., computer science from Brandeis University (2003)
M.A., linguistics from the University of Connecticut (1991)
B.A., linguistics from Yale University (1987)
Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, Language/Linguistics, Programming
Current Research:
My current research focuses on the computational modeling of language and related cognitive phenomena. My students and I use distributed representations for disambiguating word meaning ("The pitcher threw the ball" vs. "The pitcher was full of water") and for modeling episodic/declarative ("who did what to whom") memory. A question driving this research is the current lack of consensus about whether episodic/declarative memory is considered to be local ("one neuron, one concept") or distributed ("one for all and all for one"). I am currently using Vector Symbolic Architecture approaches, like holographic memory, to try and address this question. In the past, I have also looked at fractals and iterated function systems as a potential solution.
Levy, S.D. (2007, to appear) *Distributed Representation of Compositional Structure*. In Juan R. Rabuñal, Julian Dorado, and Alejandro Pazos (eds.), Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence, Hershey, Pennsylvania: IGI Publishing.
Levy, S.D. (2007) *Changing Semantic Role Representations with Holographic Memory*. In Computational Approaches to Representation Change during Learning and Development: Papers from the 2007 AAAI Symposium. Technical Report FS-07-04, AAAI Press.
Levy, S.D. (2007) *Complexity and Paradox: Engaging Diversity through Language.* Proceedings of the Fourth Fourth Annual Scholarship of Diversity Conference, Blacksburg, Virignia
Levy, S.D. and Kirby, S. (2006). * Evolving Distributed Representations for Language with Self-Organizing Maps*. Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on the Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Communication, Rome, Italy (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). Springer Verlag.
Prefessor Levy is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Cognitive Science Society.
Prof. Levy enjoys playing Old Time music on the fiddle with Rockbridge-area musicians, learning new languages, and participating in events sponsored by Washington and Lee Campus Hillel and other cultural organizations.