Michael Gasser is a computational linguist and cognitive scientist. For 18 years his research was concerned with computational modeling of human language acquisition, relational knowledge, and rhythm processing, especially using neural networks. More recently he has turned his attention to applications of computational linguistics to the democratization of knowledge. The main focus of this work is the building of practical systems that process some of the disadvantaged languages of the Global South and can be applied to tasks such as translation, language teaching, information retrieval, and language revitalization. This work currently concentrates on the major languages of Ethiopia and several indigenous languages of the Americas.
The research that I current do is concerned with developing computational tools for languages of the Global South.
Outside of academia, I'm involved in activism of various sorts, related to ecology, immigration, language rights, and the democratization of science. Email me if you're interested.