Schooling the Jeopardy! Champ: Far From Elementary

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 331; no. 6020; p. 999
• Main Author: FRENKEL, KAREN A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science 25.02.2011
• Subjects: Internships; NEWS & ANALYSIS; Search engines
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.331.6020.999

Last week, Nico Schlaefer, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and an IBM Ph.D. Fellow, told Science about the algorithm he contributed to the now-world-famous Watson computer. For 7 years, IBM researchers toiled to build a machine that could understand and answer spoken questions. In 2007, the company invited computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to two workshops at its research center in Yorktown Heights, New York. For CMU graduate student Nico Schlaefer, the workshops were a turning point. As an undergraduate at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, and a visiting scholar at CMU in 2005, Schlaefer had built a question-answer system called Ephyra. Impressed, IBM offered Schlaefer a summer internship with the project — the first of three he spent working on Watson. Last week, Schlaefer, now a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at CMU and an IBM Ph.D. Fellow, told Science about the algorithm he contributed to the now-world-famous computer. * Karen A. Frenkel is a science writer in New York City.