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