UMass NLP Seminar

This webpage has information about two NLP seminar activities for Spring 2026: (1) a list of NLP research seminar talks by visitors, which are open to anyone at UMass or the Five Colleges; and (2) an accompanying discussion course, COMPSCI 692L, for reading and discussing related research papers.

NLP research seminar talks

The research talk schedule will be posted when it is available. There will be around five talks, typically taking place at or around noon on various weekdays, especially in February and March.

  • Week of 2/9: likely there will be a speaker, exact day TBD
  • Week of 2/16: no speaker (probably)
  • Week of 2/23: speaker, exact day TBD
  • Week of 3/2: speaker, exact day TBD
  • Week of 3/9: speaker, exact day TBD
  • Week of 3/16: no speaker (Spring Break)
  • Week of 3/23: speaker, exact day TBD

Discussion course (COMPSCI 692L)

The seminar is also available as a 1-credit seminar course, COMPSCI 692L, instructor Brendan O’Connor (email). Enrollment in the course is not required to attend talks.

For those enrolled in the course, it has a regularly scheduled discussion class time, Wednesdays 11:30am-12:45pm (as per SPIRE), in room LGRC A104. Schedule:

  • Class session, Feb 5: No class (scheduling confusion, sorry)
  • Class session, Feb 11: Before class, finish your review of one of the papers specified from the instructor’s email. Come to Wednesday class ready so that you could discuss your paper and explain it, at a high level (no slides), to your fellow students.
  • TBA

For spring 2026, the discussion section will focus on reading and discussing the research papers of the NLP research visitors. Visitor talks will often not be at the class discussion time, but enrolled students will be required to attend or do make-up activities. When the schedule allows, our goal is to read papers before the researcher’s visit, and be prepared to engage with questions and discussion.

Each week’s session will focus on one or a few papers, such as the work authored by an upcoming visitor. All participants will choose and read one or more papers for each week’s session, and write reactions, comments, and bring questions to class. Activities will primarily include participating in discussions.

Note the course schedule is front loaded for early in the semester. Due to the required attendance (or equivlant makeup) at research talks on other days, we will end earlier in the semester. The number of class sessions is chosen so that the total number of (class sessions + non-class talks) = the normal number of class sessions in a standard weekly 1-credit course.

Depending on the schedule, the later part of the semester may feature talks and discussions of other NLP research topics.

The course is recommended for graduate students with experience in NLP, such as one from the UMass NLP courses page. COMPSCI 485 and 685 may be the most relevant.

Course requirements

This course is structured about NLP research seminar visitors. For each visitor, students are required to read a paper, and go to the talk.

For each researcher, you’ll submit two reviews:

  1. Paper review: Read in detail a research paper, and submit a summary and comments on this Google Form: 692L Paper Review. This is due the night before the class session where the author’s work is being discussed (as per the schedule).
  2. Talk review: Take notes during the talk. Afterward, write and submit comments on this Google Form: 692L Talk Review. This is due the day after the talk (but it might be easiest to submit it the same day, while it’s still fresh in your mind). For some talks, video recordings may be available, but do not count on it.

Comments should be written in your own words.

Attendance is required at class sessions and talks, except for conflicting classes (for the talks), or for extenuating circumstances (in general). Allowable extenuating circumstances are those according to official University policy, including personal, health, religious observances, official University travel, etc. To make up a missed class session or talk, read an additional paper and submit a review through the form, and clearly mark what it’s a makeup for.

Paper reading

How long does it take to read a paper? Anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours or more, depending on how much familiarity you have with a topic, background information, the paper’s length, nature of contribution, writing quality, and many other factors.

For this course, reserve at least one hour of reading per paper.

I (Brendan) usually advise reading via multiple passes through the paper. For example: (1) Read the abstract and quickly skim through the rest of the paper, to get a feel for what they did overall, and what the major resesarch questions are that they are intending to address. For typical experimentally-driven or empirical NLP papers, this includes seeing what all the tables and figures are. (2) Do a moderately deep read, taking notes on terminology, concepts, or various details you want to come back to. (3) Go deeper on parts that you’d like to understand better, possibly including looking up previous work and such that is necessary to understand the main things you want to learn.

The important thing is to NOT start with a deep read, which can bog you down and cause you to spend too much time on less important details.

Other course details

If you’d like to participate but cannot sign up in SPIRE, please submit your information on this form.

Communication will be through email.

Previous seminars

Speakers from some previous offerings of the NLP Seminar: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023.