Damian Romero (pronouns: he, him, they). Research associate working with Dr. Steven Bethard (University of Arizona School of Information) and Dr. Tracy Crane (University of Miami Miller School of Medicine). NIH Grant Project #1R21CA256680-01: Using Natural Language Processing to Determine Predictors of Healthy Diet and Physical Activity Behavior Change in Ovarian Cancer Survivors
As a research associate, I am tasked with using the data in the Lifestyle Intervention for Ovarian Cancer Enhanced Survival (LIvES) dataset to help improve outcomes of cancer prevention interventions for U.S. Latina ovarian cancer survivors. This research is a step forward in democratizing the tools created by the LIvES project by giving access to automated fidelity monitoring to Hispanics, the largest ethnic minority in the U.S. We expect to inspire further research in other minority languages and cultures.
About me:
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, focusing on corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, and natural language processing with experience in English, Spanish, and Portuguese projects for academia and industry. I study human interactions through computational linguistics. I hold an M.A. in Hispanic Linguistics and a B.A. in linguistics and language teaching. I have been a Spanish teacher for more than eight years, both in face-to-face and online modalities.
During my free time, I enjoy salsa dancing. I was recently stranded in Buenos Aires airport during the COVID crisis where the airport staff joked saying I was the "Mexican Tom Hanks" (vid. The Terminal), but I had fun while on this brief stay at the airport.
Latest news:
- I am a Machine Learning intern at Explosion AI! I am beyond happy to be able to work with all the great people on this team
- I was awarded the September 2021 Research and Project Grant (ReaP) of the GSPC to work on my collecting experts' perceptions of email texts
- I led the Open Access (OA) publication of 50 linguistic presentation resources in our Research Data repository: https://new.library.arizona.edu/news/library-data-specialists-amplify-student-research-discoveries
- The MCEC team led by SLAT Ph.D. student Hanyu Jia and myself just published the following sample dataset of UA academic emails: https://doi.org/10.25422/azu.data.14259785
Past news:
- UArizona's ReDATA Graduate Assistant (ask me anything!). Worked in DevOps, data curation, and outreach for the ReDATA team at the University of Arizona Libraries, Office of Digital Innovation & Stewardship. If you would like to learn more about ReDATA and how to publish your alternative research outputs (datasets, code, posters, media, etc.) you can do so here.
- Copyright First Responders (ask me anything!). Copyright QA person certified by CFR by Kyle K. Courtney, copyright advisor at Harvard’s Office for Scholarly Communication. Spring 2021
- WCCFL 2021 @UArizona. Lead Tech Coordinator at the 31st West Coast Conference in Formal Linguistics (#39) entirely online. You can find more information about the conference as well as the recoded keynote talks at: https://sites.google.com/view/wccfl2021/ (You can watch Noam Chomsky's talk here)