Sophia Ananiadou is a British computer scientist and computational linguist. She led the development of and directs the National Centre for Text Mining (NaCTeM) in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. She is also a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

in the Department of Computer Science at the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univ ...

. Her research focusses on biomedical

text mining Text mining, also referred to as ''text data mining'', similar to text analytics, is the process of deriving high-quality information from text. It involves "the discovery by computer of new, previously unknown information, by automatically extract ...

and natural language processing and has fed into the development of numerous applications that, for example, facilitate the discovery of new knowledge, enable exploration of historical archives, allow semantic search of biomedical literature, reduce human effort in screening search hits for production of systematic reviews, enable enrichment of

metabolic pathway In biochemistry, a metabolic pathway is a linked series of chemical reactions occurring within a cell. The reactants, products, and intermediates of an enzymatic reaction are known as metabolites, which are modified by a sequence of chemical reac ...

models with evidence from the literature, allow discovery of risk in the construction industry from health and safety incident reports and enable interoperability of components in text mining

workflow A workflow consists of an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity, enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information. It can be depicted as a sequence o ...

Education

Ananiadou was educated at the Lycée français St Joseph in Athens, Greece (1969–1975). She received a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

(Ptychion) from the

University of Athens The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA; el, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών, ''Ethnikó ke Kapodistriakó Panepistímio Athinón''), usually referred to simply as the Univers ...

(1979), a

Master of Advanced Studies A Master of Advanced Studies or Master of Advanced Study (MAS, M.A.S., or MASt) is a postgraduate degree awarded in various countries. Master of Advanced Studies programs may be non-consecutive programs tailored for "specific groups of working pro ...

(DEA) in Linguistics from Paris VII, Jussieu, France (1980), a DEA in Literature from Paris IV, Sorbonne, France (1984) and a PhD in Computational linguistics from the

University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research. On 1 Oct ...

(UMIST), in 1988.

Career and research

Ananiadou was a research assistant at Dalle Molle Institute for Semantic and Cognitive Studies (ISSCO, 1983–1984), a Research Assistant (1985–1988) then Research Associate (1988–1993) in the Department of Language Engineering at

UMIST The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research. On 1 Oct ...

, Senior Lecturer at

Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester Metropolitan University is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has over 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties (Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Educat ...

(1993–1999), Senior Lecturer then

Reader A reader is a person who reads. It may also refer to: Computing and technology * Adobe Reader (now Adobe Acrobat), a PDF reader * Bible Reader for Palm, a discontinued PDA application * A card reader, for extracting data from various forms of ...

in the School of Computing Science and Engineering,

University of Salford , caption = Coat of ArmsUniversity of Salford , mottoeng = "Let us seek higher things" , established = 1850 - Pendleton Mechanics Institute 1896 – Royal Technical Institute, Salford 1967 – gained ...

(2000–2005), then Reader in the School of Computer Science,

(2005–2009). Since 2009, she has served as Professor in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

in the Department of Computer Science at the

. Ananiadou has published since 1986, has an

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as ...

of 64 and
Research.com
United Kingdom ranking in Computer Science of 99. Since 2018, she has served as the deputy director of the Institute for Data Science and

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

, University of Manchester. Ananiadou received a Diplôme de traducteur (Diploma of Translator) from the Institut français d'Athènes, Greece (1979) and a Certificate in Counselling from the

, UK 2004.

Awards and honours

In 2019, in recognition of her contributions in

and text mining for

Biomedicine Biomedicine (also referred to as Western medicine, mainstream medicine or conventional medicine)

, Ananiadou received an honorary doctorate from the

University of the Aegean The University of the Aegean ( el, Πανεπιστήμιο Αιγαίου) is a public, multi-campus university located in Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, Syros and Lemnos, Greece. It was founded on March 20, 1984, by the Presidential Act 83/1984 ...

, on the 20th anniversary of its Department of Mediterranean Studies,

Rhodes Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the S ...

. Ananiadou received the

Unstructured Information Management Architecture UIMA ( ), short for Unstructured Information Management Architecture, is an OASIS standard for content analytics, originally developed at IBM. It provides a component software architecture for the development, discovery, composition, and deplo ...

(UIMA) innovation award from IBM three years running (2006, 2007 & 2008). She was awarded the

Daiwa Adrian Prize This Daiwa Adrian Prize is an award given by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, a UK charity, to scientists who have made significant achievements in science through Anglo-Japanese collaborative research. Prizes are awarded every third year and ...

in 2004 and also received a Japan Trust award from the Ministry of Education, Japan in 1997. Ananiadou has been a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

Alan Turing Institute The Alan Turing Institute is the United Kingdom's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, founded in 2015 and largely funded by the UK government. It is named after Alan Turing, the British mathematician and computing ...

in London since 2018. Since 2021, she is a member of the ELLIS Society, the professional society of the cross-national European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems. Ananiadou served as

vice president A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on ...

(VP) of the European Association for Terminology from 1997 to 1999. At the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2020), she received, wit
M. Li
an
H. Takamura
a

for the paper
A Neural Model for Aggregating Coreference Annotation in Crowdsourcing
.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ananiadou, Sophia Living people British women computer scientists Academics of the University of Manchester British computer scientists 1957 births Greek computer scientists Computer scientists Natural language processing researchers