Top academic Johan Bos appointed to Endowed Chair at Arts Faculty

Prof. Johan Bos will be appointed to the Endowed Chair at the Faculty of Arts on 1 August 2010. Bos is one of the nine top academics to be financed by the Board of the University via the Endowed Chair Programme. Bos graduated ‘cum laude’ (with distinction) in computational linguistics at the University of Groningen, gained his PhD ‘magna cum laude’ (with great distinction) at Saarbrücken University and then became a postdoc researcher at the University of Edinburgh. He has been Professor of Computer Science at the Sapienza University of Rome since 2005. In Groningen he will become Professor of Computational Semantics.

Johan Bos (Delfzijl, 1968) is an authority in the field of computational semantics, the systematic translation of natural language into meaning representations and using the results for automatic reasoning. The impact of Bos’s research is demonstrated by his high citation score, which will place him at the absolute top of the Faculty of Arts. He co-authored the most widely used textbook on computational semantics, Representation and Inference, and is also highly respected for his skilful work as a developer and programmer. He has developed programs such as DIPPER and BOXER, which are used all over the world. He has a strong international network, thanks not only to his international career thus far but also to his prominent role in the Association for Computational Linguistics, in which he is president of a Special Interest Group for computational semantics, to his frequent presentations as invited speaker at international conferences and to his involvement in international research projects.

Computational Linguistics

Bos’s research will be incorporated in the research conducted by the Centre for Language and Cognition (CLCG) and will further reinforce the Computational Linguistics research group, a group that gained a 4x5 score in the latest visitation and may be considered to be among the best in Europe. Bos will work on the development of a large-scale, detailed semantic annotation of English, Dutch and multilingual texts and their application in statistics teaching material in computational semantics.

Endowed Chairs programme

In order to expand its reputation as an excellent research institution, in 2009 the University of Groningen started an ambitious investment programme, the University of Groningen Endowed Chairs programme. This project is founded on an investment of about EUR 20 million, designed to attract internationally prominent academics to the University of Groningen. The fields these academics work in are divided over the nine faculties. Thus far, the following professors have been appointed to Endowed Chairs: Kocku von Stuckrad (Theology and Religious Studies), Philip McCann (Spatial Sciences) and Igor Douven (Philosophy).

Note for the press

More information:
Prof. Johan Bos, e-mail: bos meaningfactory.com
Prof. Gerry Wakker, dean of the Faculty of Arts, tel. 050-363 6050, e-mail: g.c.wakker rug.nl