Interest in GSOC 2008

[Alex Escalona]

Hi,

I am writing to express interest in the GSoC 2008 mentorship offered by the
One Laptop Per Child association. I am a first-year graduate student in
computer science at the Illinois Institute of Technology's MSCS program. My
disciplinary interests include general topics in the broad field of
computational-linguistics, social issues in computer science, open-source
software, and programming in general. I have closely followed the
development of the OLPC's mission to make laptops available to children
around the world. In fact, I have blogged on a few opportunities on issues
related to the OLPC's work (see
here<http://randomatom.blogspot.com/search?q=olpc&x=0&y=0>and
here <http://randomatom.blogspot.com/search?q=one+laptop+child&x=0&y=0>, for
posts on these topics at http://randomatom.blogspot.com).

In particular, I would be interested in helping further development in the
areas of speech-synthesis/TTS, especially as concerns localization of
languages and dialects, as well any general language-learning efforts at
OLPC, including eSpeak (TalknType and Speech Server), among others. I
completed numerous courses in Linguistics in my undergraduate studies in
Anthropology and Latin-American studies at the University of Chicago,
including a full year of introductory courses in semantics, phonetics,
morphology, syntax, and other general topics in linguistics. I have also
studied German, Russian, and Romani (a SE European language spoken by the
Roma people), and am a native-speaker of Spanish, my mother tongue. In
addition, I am versed in Java, and have programmed in C#, OCaml, C, C++,
SQL, MySQL. I have used SVN on several projects, including as a
collaborative version-control system. Moreover, I am currently enrolled in a
course on programming languages and translators which covers topics in
scanning, parsing, compiler design, and other topics of interest in
language-related applications.

In conclusion, I would welcome the opportunity to speak more about my
interests in these areas, as well as to hear more about the OLPC's efforts
in general linguistic and socio-cultural applications.

Best,

Alex Escalona
vergueishon on IRC
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