M.S. in Human Language Technology
Human language technology (HLT) is an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of linguistics, computer science, mathematics, artificial intelligence, engineering, and information technology. It refers to the development of computer technologies that involve language, such as speech recognition and speech synthesis (ASR and TTS), machine translation, intelligent search, information extraction, parsing, and more. HLT is a massively growing enterprise and is a key part of technologies that deal with huge digital datasets, given the explosive growth of the multilingual Internet. Because of its industrial applications, the field provides far more employment opportunities than are available in traditional academic research. Demand is growing for trained HLT professionals including programmers, computational linguists, data scientists, and natural language processing engineers.
Our Master of Science in HLT program brings to this task the requisite skills in programming and computational methods, but our department as a whole has additional strengths that enrich our program, for example, a deep appreciation for language as an object of scientific study. Complementing the core competencies of HLT, our department’s ongoing commitment to the documentation, preservation, and revitalization of Native American and other endangered languages also provides valuable elective coursework and other opportunities for students to engage in language technology projects beyond data-abundant languages like English, and to do so in ways that respect, support, and bring benefit to language communities.
The mission of our HLT program is to train students for HLT-related jobs in industry at the master’s level, placing HLT graduates in this burgeoning high-tech domain both in Arizona and worldwide. Students admitted to the PhD linguistics program may also acquire an HLT MS degree along the way to a PhD. We have also established an “accelerated” version of the program so that students in appropriate majors can begin the Master of Science degree while still enrolled as undergrads at the University of Arizona.
Upon completion of the degree, students will have the skills required to stand out and advance their career in a competitive workforce. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the program, they will be prepared for language-related careers in a wide variety of industries.
“My program gave me so many fundamentals for statistics and linguistic program design, which are essential to understanding the behind-the-scenes operation of the tools I’m using… People coming out of the HLT program have the opportunity to be highly valuable citizens of the world — to help society navigate through the rapid changes that are happening now and coming.”
– 2017 HLT alum Trevor Sullivan, senior artificial intelligence conversational engineer (read full story)
Why Choose Our HLT Program?
- Balanced, Practical Curriculum: Explore a dynamic blend of linguistics, computational linguistics, and practical skills. Our program covers everything from speech recognition and machine translation to web search engine technology and more, with a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI) applications, including LLMs.
- High Demand for HLT and AI Professionals: The fields of HLT and AI are rapidly expanding, with a growing need for skilled professionals like programmers, computational linguists, data scientists, and natural language processing engineers. Our graduates are prepared for diverse careers across industries, not just academia.
- Real-World Experience: A highlight of our program is a hands-on internship where students apply what they've learned in a real-world NLP project. Our students have completed their internships with top companies including Lockheed Martin, Intel, Raytheon, IBM, Motorola, as well as tech start-ups. With a variety of options to document your internship, you'll be well-prepared whether your plans after graduation include academia or industry.
- Interdisciplinary Focus: We welcome students from various backgrounds, provided they have a passion for language and sufficient programming proficiency in Python.
- Multiple Career Paths: With more job opportunities in industry than in traditional academia, our program also prepares you for a competitive workforce. You’ll be equipped with the skills needed to excel in roles that bridge language and technology, whichever kind of path you plan to pursue. Students can choose to write up their internship work as part of an online portfolio that is valuable when searching for jobs in industry, or as a report that is patterned after a Master’s thesis, which can be valuable when pursuing an academic path.
Career Opportunities
Graduates from our HLT program are prepared for careers in:
- Software Development
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
- Data Science and Analytics
- Natural Language Processing
- Language Engineering
Many students find their first job out of the program through the companies who host their internships.
What You’ll Learn
Our curriculum includes:
- Statistical and symbolic methods in Computational Linguistics
- Natural Language Processing
- Speech Technology (automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech)
- Text Retrieval and information extraction
- Neural Network-based models
You’ll also gain training in professionalism for the tech industry to enhance your career prospects.
Internship
In addition to program coursework, students are expected to complete a minimum of 6 credit hours of internship (corresponding to 270 hours of actual work time). The internship experience provides real-world experience in preparation for a career in HLT. The internship requirement can be met any point during the program, though we typically suggest waiting until finishing the first 2-4 courses. We're very flexible about the form the internship can take (project at a startup, academic institution, non-profit, intelligence agency, etc.).
For more information about the internship, please see the Internship Guidelines page. For general questions, look at our frequently asked questions.