David L. Chen

About Me

Results-oriented technical leader with 12+ years of experience at Google Search and Maps, specializing in quality, ranking, personalization, and recommendations. Proven ability to leverage ML/NLP expertise (Ph.D. thesis focused on learning semantics of natural language from perceptual cues) to build impactful user-facing products.

Passionate about creating positive social impact through user-focused solutions and team development. Demonstrated ability to:

• Lead and mentor high-performing teams: Successfully built and scaled multiple teams, fostering innovation and delivering results through empowerment and continuous improvement.
• Partner effectively with PM and UX: Collaborate closely to design, validate, and deliver user-centric solutions that meet real needs.
• Navigate complex environments: Excel at navigating ambiguity, aligning stakeholders across complex organizations, and prioritizing strong relationships to ensure high-quality, timely delivery.

I graduated with a PhD in Computer Science at UT Austin in May, 2012.

During my PhD, I had the privilege of working with Prof. Ray Mooney, a leading researcher in machine learning and natural language processing. His guidance was invaluable in shaping my research and career.

I was an active member of the Machine Learning Research Group within the Artificial Intelligence Lab at UT Austin. This environment provided me with a rich learning experience and opportunities to collaborate with talented researchers.

My educational background includes a B.S. degree in EECS from UC Berkeley (2004) and a Master's degree in CS from UCLA (2006). These academic experiences have provided me with a strong foundation in computer science and prepared me for my research and professional endeavors.

Publications and Technical Talks

Journal

• Training a Multilingual Sportscaster: Using Perceptual Context to Learn Language
  [Abstract] [PDF] [JAIR link] [Website]
  David L. Chen, Joohyun Kim, Raymond J. Mooney
  Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), 37, pages 397-435, 2010

Conference

• Fast Online Lexicon Learning for Grounded Language Acquisition
  [Abstract] [PDF] [Slides (PPT)] [Website]
  David L. Chen
  Annual Meetings of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2012


• Learning to Interpret Natural Language Navigation Instructions from Observations
  [Abstract] [PDF] [Slides (PPT)] [Website]
  David L. Chen and Raymond J. Mooney
  AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2011


• Collecting Highly Parallel Data for Paraphrase Evaluation
  [Abstract] [PDF] [Slides (PPT)] [Website]
  David L. Chen and William B. Dolan
  Annual Meetings of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2011


• Learning to Sportscast: A Test of Grounded Language Acquisition
  [Abstract] [PDF] [Talk (video)] [Slides (PPT)] [poster (PDF)] [Website]
  David L. Chen and Raymond J. Mooney
  International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2008.


• Improved error reporting for software that uses black-box components
  [PDF]
  Jungwoo Ha, Christopher J. Rossbach, Jason V. Davis, Indrajit Roy, Hany E. Ramadan, Donald E. Porter, David L. Chen and Emmett Witchel
  Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), pp. 101-111, ACM, 2007.

Workshop

• Building a Persistent Workforce on Mechanical Turk for Multilingual Data Collection
  [Abstract] [PDF] [Website]
  David L. Chen and William B. Dolan
  Human Computation Workshop (HCOMP), 2011


• Panning for Gold: Finding Relevant Semantic Content for Grounded Language Learning
  [Abstract] [PDF] [Poster (PPT)] [Poster (PDF)] [Website]
  David L. Chen and Raymond J. Mooney
  Symposium on Machine Learning in Speech and Language Processing (MLSLP), 2011

Unrefereed

• Learning Language from Ambiguous Perceptual Context
  [PDF] [Slides (PPT)]
  David L. Chen
  Doctoral Dissertation, 2012


• Learning Language from Perceptual Context
  [PDF] [Slides (PPT)] [Website]
  David L. Chen
  Doctoral Dissertation Proposal, 2009


• Using Perceptual Context to Ground Language
  [Slides (PDF)]
  David Chen
  IBM Statistical Machine Learning and Its Application (SMiLe) Workshop, October 2009


• Learning to Sportscast: A Test of Grounded Language Acquisition
  [Slides (PPT)] [Slides print-version (PPT)]
  David L. Chen
  Research Preparation Exam, Department of Computer Science, The University of Texas at Austin, August 2008


• Sisterhood of Classifiers: A Comparative Study of Naive Bayes and Noisy-or Networks
  [PDF]
  David Chen
  Master's Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of California at Los Angeles, 2006

Contact Info

Email: davidlchen at gmail.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidlchen