I'm a PhD candidate in the Computer and Information Sciences department of the University of Delaware. You can email me at . My research is in applying natural language processing techniques to assist people with speech disabilities. I identify with both the natural language processing/computational linguistics community as well as the assistive technologies community. Many such people type letters into an electronic device that outputs synthetic speech for them. However, the process is slow, especially because many users have limited motor control. We predict the words the user might want to help them communicate more quickly. Specifically, the devices are used for many things throughout the day (various subjects and styles), so my thesis will develop a language model that seamlessly adapts to the topic and style of the words the person is typing. Personal bio It's difficult to try to tell someone who you are in a little paragraph, but here goes... Jesus was asked by some people which of the ten commandments was the greatest, to which he responded (paraphrased to modern language from Matthew 22:37-40):   This is the first and greatest commandment: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' The second is like it: 'Love one another as yourself.'   He goes on to say that all of the ten commandments and subsequent commands hang on these two. When I read and re-read what Jesus said there, I can't help but see that it's how I want to live my life and how I try to. I fall short of those two simple principles, but I'm trying to improve. I'll never be perfect, but my goal is to serve God and others perfectly. Even though it's an unattainable goal, I still chase it in the hopes that I can love and serve a little better. At another time, he was talking to his close followers and said this (paraphrased from John 15:9):   As the Father loved me, I also have loved you; abide in my love.   I feel similarly - God taught me by example what love is and in turn I try to show that love to others. To demonstrate what I mean, here's the classic John 3:16-17 (paraphrased again), in which Jesus gives an example of God's love and Jesus' purpose on earth:   For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. God did not send His son into the world to condemn it, but that the world through him might be saved.   It's tough to sum things up in a little block of text on a webpage, but I think that it conveys the rough message that God loved me and made sacrifices to reach out to me and that I try to love him and others as a result of his love. (For the people wondering why I didn't take literal quotes: I tried to make the verses as accessible as possible while preserving their meaning. People familiar with the Bible and the funny stuff with Old English, capitalization, and sentences split across verses generally don't need me to make it accessible, so I focused on the group of people that was unfamiliar with all that stuff.)