Zola Mahlaza
I am a lecturer (US=Assistant professor) at the department of Informatics, University of Pretoria.
I am also a PhD candidate in Computer Science at UCT and a member of Assoc.Prof. Keet’s KnowledgE ENgineering (KEEN). My current research focus is on natural language generation for Nguni languages. I am interested in conceptual modelling and human language technologies.
Recent highlights:
- The ToCT task ontology for capturing complex templates was published at JOWO 2021
- We investigated the association between various types of NLG errors and low human judgements of naturalness and quality for machine learning vs. template generated texts
- Published a journal article on the formalisation of “grammar-infused templates”: they can be used to verbalise ontologies and similar artefacts
- Presented a long paper on our new isiZulu controlled natural language at WebNLG+2020
- Supervised Honours student who built an math expression verbaliser for isiZulu
- Won best student paper at MTS2019 for my collaboration with my supervisor and Mary-Jane Antia. The paper was on creating a CNL for authoring competency questions
Prior to this, I worked on creating grammar rules for generating weather bulletins in isiXhosa and isiZulu for my Masters, worked as Software Engineer (Android dev.), and investigated the feasibility of using a Raspberry Pi to host a cloudlet for my honours
My Erdős number is 5