• » MMath, David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 2008
• » BCS (Theory & Computation, Linguistics), University of New Brunswick, 2006

My primary area of interest is (applied) computational linguistics, also known as natural language processing (though I prefer the former, having studied linguistics). I'm also interested in the Semantic Web, and am a member of the W3C Rule Interchange Format Working Group and co-editor of the Use Cases and Requirements. On the side, I dabble with web design.

I am currently working for Small Energy Group in Vancouver, BC.

Contact

The best way to contact me is by email.

Projects

• » HealthDoc
  • A project centered at the University of Waterloo that is developing software for creating tailored patient education brochures. I'm currently investigating language that appeals to children, an application of which is patient education.
• » TRANSLATOR
  • A free tool available as a Java Web Start application that automatically translates English facts and rules into a formal representation for use on the Semantic Web. This work began as my honours thesis at UNB.
• » RuleML
  • I've been involved with the Rule Markup Initiative through NRC-IIT since 2003, where I maintained the evolving specification over the course of seven releases (using mostly XML Schema along with some Schematron). I also contributed to related W3C submissions (SWRL, SWSL and WRL).
• » UNB Booksale
  • A website to help UNB students buy and sell their used textbooks that I created after becoming tired of seeing bulletin boards around campus plastered with (often several layers of) used textbook advertisements.
• » AgentMatcher
  • I helped to develop this e-Learning system for matching learners and learning objects as part of eduSource. My contribution was an XSLT translator for learning object metadata.

Publications

• » Hirtle, D. (2008) 'Healthy' Coreference: Applying Coreference Resolution to the Health Education Domain. MMath thesis, Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo.
• » Chiu, A. and Hirtle, D. (2007) Beyond Clone Detection. CS846: Software Evolution project report, Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo.
• » Hirtle, D. (2006) Child Appeal: A Corpus-based Analysis of Fiction for Early Readers. CS886: Discourse Analysis project report, Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo.
• » Hirtle, D. (2006) TRANSLATOR: A TRANSlator from LAnguage TO Rules. Canadian Symposium on Text Analysis (CaSTA), Fredericton, Canada, October 2006.
• » Biletskiy, Y., Hirtle, D., and Vorochek, O. (2006) Toward the Identification and Elimination of Semantic Conflicts for Integration of RuleML-based Ontologies. Canadian Semantic Web Working Symposium (CSWWS), Quebec City, Canada, June 6, 2006.
• » Ball, M., Boley, H., Hirtle, D., Mei, J., and Spencer, B. (2005) Implementing RuleML Using Schemas, Translators, and Bidirectional Interpreters. W3C Workshop on Rule Languages for Interoperability, Washington, D.C., April 27-28, 2005. Updated for International Conference on Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web, Galway, Ireland, November 10-12, 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 3791: 218-223.
• » Boley, H., Bhavsar, V.C., Hirtle, D., Singh, A., Sun, Z., and Yang, L. (2005) A match-making system for learners and learning objects. Journal of Interactive Technology and Smart Education. 2: 141-149.
• » Bhavsar, V.C., Boley, H., Hirtle, D., Singh, A., Sun, Z., and Yang, L. (2004) AgentMatcher Search in Weighted, Tree-Structured Learning Object Metadata. Presented at Learning Objects Summit, Fredericton, NB, March 29-30, 2004.
• » Hirtle, D. (2004) Speech Variability: The Biggest Hurdle for Recognition. Internal report, Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick.
• » Hirtle, D., and Sun, Z. (2003) CanCore <=> WOO RuleML. Internal report, Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick.

The content of this page, which actually comes from a wiki, was last updated on 2009-01-07.