The NIL acronym (Natural Interaction based on Language) identifies a group of researchers and practitioners whose interests converge towards the development of interfaces based on language for modern day IT applications for modifying or finding information, issuing commands, or present output results in a way easy to understand.
Various Artificial Intelligence techniques contribute towards this goal. The mainstay of NIL is obviously a strong Natural Language Processing component. However, the complexities of language interactions require the use of additional techniques of Knowledge Representation, Expert Systems, Case-Based Reasoning, Evolutionary Algorithms, User Modeling and Computational Creativity.
NIL arises in 2005 to provide a minimal infrastructure to house colaborative projects between researchers at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Nevertheless, it is open to contributions from researchers affiliated at other institutions if they are interested in the stated goals. At the same point, NIL is born with the overall goal of developing the technologies that it researchs on to the point where they can be used for practical applications. For this reason, we are always on the look out for opportunities to test the applicability of our work in real life situations.
NIL researchers Pablo Gervás and Raquel Hervás take part in the First NLG Shared Task and Evaluation Challenge on Attribute Selection for Referring Expressions Generation held in Copenhagen in conjunction with the UCNLG+MT Workshop.
NIL researcher Carlos León undertook as summer internship at the Institute of Creative Technologies, University of Southern California.
NIL researcher Pablo Gervás, together with Manuel de Buenaga and Diego Gachet, from the Universidad Europea de Madrid, travels to visit the Creative Systems Lab, at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, to attend a meeting funded by the MAVIR research network.
NIL researchers Raquel Hervás and Virginia Francisco visit the Creative Systems Lab, at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, within the framework of Spanish-Portuguese Integrated Action HP2003-0068, from January to February 2007.
NIL researchers Raquel Hervás, Virginia Francisco, and Pablo Gervás visit the Creative Systems Lab, at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, within the framework of Spanish-Portuguese Integrated Action HP2003-0068, from 9th to 16th June 2006.
Positive evaluation of research project GALANTE (Generación de Lenguaje Natural para Textos con Emociones), a proposal by the NIL team in colaboration with the Julietta research group at the University of Seville.
Kumar Abhinav, from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, carried out his summer internship with the NIL group, from May to July 2006.
NIL researchers Pablo Gervás and Federico Peinado participate in iEntertain, an event organised by the Creative Systems Lab, at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, within the framework of Spanish-Portuguese Integrated Action HP2003-0068, from 6th to 8th April 2006.
Francisco Cámara Pereira, from the Creative Systems Lab of the University of Coimbra, Portugal, visited the Facultad de Informática as guest of the NIL team, within the framework of Spanish-Portuguese Integrated Action HP2003-0068.
Ing. Rodrigo García Sánchez, from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, visited Madrid for a research colaboration with the NIL group from February to July 2006.
