The Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute (NMDSI) will host “A Framework for Domain-Specific Applications of Large Language Models” as part of our regular Speaker Series on Thursday, June 6, from noon to 1 p.m. (CT).
In this session, you’ll hear from Nadiyah Johnson, founder and CEO of Jet Constellations, and Kevin Chovanec, data scientist at Marquette University, on how to create a framework for implementing large language models (LLMs) in specific disciplines.
During their presentation, Dr. Johnson and Dr. Chonvanec will discuss the technical applications of LLMs and provide examples of how to employ them. Dr. Johnson will share examples from her research, which is centered around understanding how both the veteran population and civilians express crisis. Dr. Chovanec will share how data professionals within higher education have begun to employ LLMs and explore how we might establish a framework for ensuring fairness and transparency in their use.
Please note that this is a virtual event.
Speaker Bios
Dr. Nadiyah Johnson is a visiting instructor in the Department of Computer Science at Marquette. Her research is predominantly geared toward AI. Dr. Johnson’s research has granted her recognition at several conferences around the globe. She previously held a role at GE Healthcare as a technical product manager with a specialty in data science. Her passion for diversity in STEM led her to launch Jet Constellations, a local software company. Its social impact arm, Milky Way Tech Hub, promotes racial diversity in the tech industry through STEM education and entrepreneurship programming and building a nurturing ecosystem of diverse techies and entrepreneurs. As founder, Dr. Johnson aims to uplift her community, including zip code 53206, through education and tech investment, and later to hopefully roll out the model to other communities around America. She is currently realizing the vision that Milwaukee is the “Milky Way Tech Hub,” a tech hub representative of Milwaukee’s diverse population. Dr. Johnson is a recent Milwaukee Business Journal 40 under 40 honoree. She earned a master’s in computational science and a Ph.D. in computer science from Marquette.
Dr. Kevin Chovanec is a data scientist in Marquette’s Office of Institutional Research and Analysis. As a member of the Data Lab at Marquette, his research focuses on natural language processing, especially LLMs in the context of educational analytics. However, his interests range across disciplines, spanning natural language processing, text analytics in early modern literature, explainable AI, educational data mining, and the history of the book. He has published a monograph with Palgrave MacMillan and over a dozen articles in journals and conference proceedings, including IEEE Big Data, IEEE Access, Renaissance Drama, and the Digital Humanities Quarterly. Dr. Chovanec has a Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from the University of North Carolina and an M.S. in data science from Marquette. Additionally, he is completing a Ph.D. in computer science at Marquette.
