CV (updated Aug. 2023)
My name's Sola Shirai (η½δΊγγ). 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.