CV (updated Aug. 2023)

My name's Sola Shirai (白井そら). I grew up in Japan's Aomori Prefecture, and now I'm living in Troy, New York as a graduate student.

I'm currently working towards my PhD in Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, advised by Professor Deborah L. MgGuinness. I am funded through the Health Empowerment by Analytics, Learning, and Semantics (HEALS) project. Prior to attending RPI, I did my undergraduate at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

My research interests revolve around leveraging knowledge-driven AI systems to produce new knowledge. In particular, my recent work has explored using KGs to perform tasks like healthy ingredient substitution and event prediction for cause-effect events.

A common guiding theme of my research is to utilize "context" to produce more interpretable and interoperable models. We intuitively have a reasonable understanding of what context is, but it is seldom precisely captured and represented in AI systems. I believe that there is great potential to leverage context in more meaningful ways to help make resources like knowledge graphs more effective in recommendation / decision making systems.

I also have a broader interest in the areas of the Semantic Web, Knowledge Graphs, Natural Language Processing, and integrating machine learning methods together with knowledge-driven methods.