John Brandon Lowe

522 N Evelyn Ave
Tucson, AZ 85710
USA

academic email
personal email
linkedin

jblowe@berkeley.edu
johnblowe@gmail.com
johnblowe

cell
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+1 415 309 5841
jblowe77

2025-now

Middle Mekong Archaeology Project (MMAP) at University of Pennsylvania Museum

Advisor, Data Scientist

2024-now

Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) at Indiana University

Curator

2023-now

Thailand Archaeometallurgy Project (TAP) at University of Pennsylvania Museum

Data Scientist, Archivist, Developer

2022-now

Centre d’études sud-asiatiques et himalayennes (CESAH) / CNRS, Paris

Membre Associé

2016-now

Various cultural heritage institutions, only a few listed here.

Museum Informatics Consultant

2011-2023

Research, Teaching, and Learning/ RTL UC Berkeley [ CollectionSpace]

Service Manager / Engineer

2010-2015

Department of Linguistics UC Berkeley [STEDT]

Specialist

2008-2009

Skygrid, Inc.

Senior Scientist, Analytics

2006-2008

Powerset, Inc. now part of Microsoft Bing

Manager of Knowledge Resources

2000-2001

Ask Jeeves, Inc.

VP Language Engineering, Chief Linguist

1999-2000

Ask Jeeves, Inc.

Sr. Software Eng., Director Core Engineering

1997-1999

International Computer Science Institute [Framenet]

Technical Director

1995

University of California, Berkeley

Ph.D. in Linguistics

1993-1999

Institute for Cognitive Studies UC Berkeley [CBOLD]

Researcher

1991-1995

LACITO/CNRS Paris, France [Projet Archivage, now Pangloss]
[The Reconstruction Engine, “R.E.”]

Chercheur, Membre Associé

1987

School of Library and Information Studies now the “iSchool” [UC Berkeley]

M.L.I.S.

1980-1987

Division of Library Automation now the California Digital Library [ MELVYL]

Principal Programmer, DBA

1977-1980

Library Plans and Policies. [UC Systemwide]

Programmer/Analyst

1972-1977

Yale UniversityDept. of Linguistics

B.A. in Linguistics

• Set strategic direction for technology development at Ask Jeeves, Inc.
• Led strategic iniative to form an international division at Ask Jeeves, Ask Jeeves International.
• Developed (in collaboration with other faculty at UC Berkeley) over 2.5 million dollars of research funding for more than half a dozen research projects over a ten-year period.

• Created and managed the Powerset Knowledge Engineering team at Powerset.
• Managed the Ask Jeeves Core Engineering team in the development of the next generation of the Ask Jeeves question-answering system, a unique suite of both high-performance web-centric C++ components and database-centric GUI components written in C++ with MFC.
• Managed the work of graduate students, postdocs, developers, and others on several long term academic research projects.
• Principal team member (one of six) in the design and implementation of U.C.’s MELVYL online catalog.

• Design and implemented software components to support dictionaries, morphologies, ontologies, onomastica, gazetteers and other language functionality in the Ask Jeeves question-answering system, in the Powerset search engine, and elsewhere.
• Architected and led development of several research databases and textbases (and associated software) in support of NSF-funded research projects.
• Designed and administered several Very Large Database Systems, including the University of California’s MELVYL online catalog and the creation of the REMARC database for the Library of Congress.
• Years of experience coding in a variety of declarative, functional, and object-oriented programming languages.

• Numerous presentations at conferences (both academic and enterprise).
• Taught courses and seminars on Computational Linguistics, on Linguistics, and on programming at UC Berkeley and in commercial enterprises.
• Instructor in the judo club at UC Berkeley, including a stint as head instructor.
• At Ask Jeeves, developed marketing and training materials, and successfully presented the message to customers and analysts, in formal presentations and impromptu one-on-ones.
• Experienced and successful grant writer.

• Improving Search Results Quality by Customizing Summary Lengths, Proceedings of ACL/HLT, 2008. (with M. Kaisser and M.A. Hearst).
• Creating a Research Collection of Question Answer Sentence Pairs with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2008, Marrakech, Morocco, 2008. (with M. Kaisser).
• Linguistic documents synchronizing sound and text, Speech Communication 33. (2001) pp. 79-96. (with Michel Jacobson and Boyd Michailovsky).
• The reconstruction engine: a computer implementation of the comparative method, Association for Computational Linguistics Special Issue in Computational Phonology 20.3 (September 1994) pp. 381-417. (with Martine Mazaudon).
• Regularity and exceptions in sound change, Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Society of Belgium, Bruxelles, December 13-15 1993. (D. Demolin, ed.). (forthcoming) (with Martine Mazaudon).
• Bibliography of the International Conferences on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics I-XXV. 407pp. Berkeley: Center for Southeast Asian Studies. (1994) (with Randy J. LaPolla).
• Du bon usage de l’informatique en linguistique historique, Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 86.1, pp. 49-87. (1991). (with Martine Mazaudon).
• Gambling on CD-ROM: Speculations on the Economics of a New Technology, Library Journal (July 1988).
• Over a dozen articles published in a variety of journals, magazines, and conference proceedings, including: Library Journal, Computational Linguistics, Bulletin de la Société Linguistique de Paris, Bulletin de la Cercle Belge de Linguistique, Conference Proceedings for SPIE, Berkeley Linguistics Society.

• Natural language query processing, USPTO# 7403938 issued on 22-Jul-2008. (with M. Barrett, G. Chevsky, T. Harrison, and S. Reddi).

• Moderate fluency and reading skills in French, Hindi-Urdu. Basic communication ability in Spanish, Portuguese.
• Rusty reading skills in Sanskrit, Classical Greek, Old English, Dutch, Brahmi, Kharosthi, Burmese, and Tibetan.
• Born in 1954 in Champaign IL, USA and grew up in the Philippines, Thailand, India, and Brazil. US Citizen.
• Offline activities: aviation, sailing, martial arts, radio, hiking.

• Furnished upon request