Prof. Josef van Genabith of the Centre for Next Generation Localisation and DCU School of Computing has won the 2011 DCU President’s Research Award for Science and Engineering. The award recognises Josef’s exceptional contribution to the field of computational linguistics and his role in spearheading DCU’s leadership in academia-industry collaborative research.

Speaking at the awards ceremony at DCU last Friday, DCU President Prof. Brian MacCraith highlighted Josef’s impressive research track record. “Josef van Genabith’s tremendous achievements in terms of grant income, graduated research students and publications history, combined with his international profile at the highest level of European research management and further afield, make him an outstanding candidate for this award“, said Prof. MacCraith.

Josef’s significant research accomplishments, presented in more than 100 peer-reviewed international research publications, have not only shaped the evolution of computational linguistics worldwide; they have also helped brand DCU and Ireland as world leaders in language technology. He has graduated 20 PhD and Masters research students, and is currently mentoring a further 13 scholars. Many of his former students are now shaping the future of the language technology industry in Ireland and beyond.

Since 2007 Josef has been Director of the Science Foundation Ireland-funded Centre for Next Generation Localisation. Under Josef's guidance, CNGL has become an internationally recognised centre of excellence in localisation and digital content intelligence. The establishment, development and on-going success of CNGL are testament to Josef’s vision, management and motivation.

Prior to CNGL, Josef was Director of the National Centre for Language Technology. He has served as Faculty Fellow of the IBM Center for Advanced Studies in Dublin since 2005 and as member of the Advisory Board of the European Association of Computational Linguistics since 2007.

Josef’s current interests include multi-lingual treebank-based deep grammar acquisition, statistical parsing and generation, machine translation and localisation. The multidisciplinary nature of his work has seen him collaborate closely with colleagues in DCU’s School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies to develop novel technologies that have significant economic and societal impact.