Who is Charles Sutton?

I am a graduate student in computer science at the University of Massachusetts. I work in the Information Extraction and Synthesis Laboratory with Andrew McCallum. My research is on graphical models applied to information extraction and natural-language processing. I am now in my fifth year. This leads many people to ask when I will graduate.

Physically, I am white and male. I have long hair, a mustache, and a beard. If you hadn't figured that much by now already (and are using a graphical browser), you must be incredibly stupid and I'll have to ask you to leave this home page immediately.

Intellectually, I am a man of mystery and intrigue: equally at home with haute couture and carry-out pizza; a master of chess, backgammon, and seven different forms of martial arts; and close friends with the CEOs of at least three Fortune 500 companies (1). I am, in short, me.

Things I have done include:

• For three years, I worked at UMass in the Experimental Knowledge Systems Laboratory under Professor Paul Cohen.
• Before that, I worked at Cycorp, Inc., an artificial intelligence company in Austin, TX. (The famous knowledge base is called Cyc-- pronounced as in "encyclopedia"; those who work on it are called Cyclists.) One thing that I have learned only recently is that this experience is a great conversation-starter among AI researchers.
• I am a graduate of St. Mary's College of Maryland, class of 1999. St. Mary's is a small, public liberal-arts college, ranked as the 2nd-best public liberal-arts college in the nation by US News.

  I have a B.A. in computer science and philosophy. This means that I spent half my time staring into a CRT and wondering how my beautifully-written code could possibly cause a segmentation fault, and the other half of my time wearing a black turtleneck and pontificating about how Kantian categorical imperatives could not possibly address the existential despair that pervades our lives. This meant that I held normal conversations with absolutely no one.

• I once had a summer job at Veridian Systems, makers of advanced integrated telemetry acquisition and analysis equipment.

Outside of school, well, I don't have a life, because I'm a graduate student, and it's not allowed. I play Go. I like to play board games and card games, and to learn new games. I enjoy cooking and baking. I do also play violin, but I haven't practiced much since I started graduate school.

I think that's quite enough for one person. Now feel free to go back to Charles's front page.

Footnote: All of this is, of course, a lie. In real life, my idea of high fashion is remembering to wear clean socks. At chess, all I do is lose, even at Losers' Chess. And the closest I've ever come to mystery and intrigue is watching Murder, She Wrote. (Didn't you love the one where Mrs. Fletcher... nah, never mind.) But all this more properly belongs on the Why Charles Sutton's life is depressing page.

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