Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

ANR Pamela (2016-2020)

Participants: Marc Tommasi [correspondent], Aurélien Bellet , Rémi Gilleron , Jan Ramon , Mahsa Asadi

The Pamela project aims at developing machine learning theories and algorithms in order to learn local and personalized models from data distributed over networked infrastructures. Our project seeks to provide first answers to modern information systems built by interconnecting many personal devices holding private user data in the search of personalized suggestions and recommendations. More precisely, we will focus on learning in a collaborative way with the help of neighbors in a network. We aim to lay the first blocks of a scientific foundation for these new types of systems, in effect moving from graphs of data to graphs of data and learned models. We argue that this shift is necessary in order to address the new constraints arising from the decentralization of information that is inherent to the emergence of big data. We will in particular focus on the question of learning under communication and privacy constraints. A significant asset of the project is the quality of its industrial partners, Snips and Mediego, who bring in their expertise in privacy protection and distributed computing as well as use cases and datasets. They will contribute to translate this fundamental research effort into concrete outcomes by developing personalized and privacy-aware assistants able to provide contextualized recommendations on small devices and smartphones. https://project.inria.fr/pamela/.

ANR JCJC GRASP (2016-2020)

Participants: Pascal Denis [correspondent], Aurélien Bellet , Rémi Gilleron , Mikaela Keller , Marc Tommasi

The GRASP project aims at designing new graph-based Machine Learning algorithms that are better tailored to Natural Language Processing structured output problems. Focusing on semi-supervised learning scenarios, we will extend current graph-based learning approaches along two main directions: (i) the use of structured outputs during inference, and (ii) a graph construction mechanism that is more dependent on the task objective and more closely related to label inference. Combined, these two research strands will provide an important step towards delivering more adaptive (to new domains and languages), more accurate, and ultimately more useful language technologies. We will target semantic and pragmatic tasks such as coreference resolution, temporal chronology prediction, and discourse parsing for which proper Machine Learning solutions are still lacking. https://project.inria.fr/grasp/.

ANR DEEP-Privacy (2019-2023)

Participants: Marc Tommasi [correspondent], Aurélien Bellet , Pascal Denis , Jan Ramon , Brij Srivastava

DEEP-PRIVACY proposes a new paradigm based on a distributed, personalized, and privacy-preserving approach for speech processing, with a focus on machine learning algorithms for speech recognition. To this end, we propose to rely on a hybrid approach: the device of each user does not share its raw speech data and runs some private computations locally, while some cross-user computations are done by communicating through a server (or a peer-to-peer network). To satisfy privacy requirements at the acoustic level, the information communicated to the server should not expose sensitive speaker information.

ANR-NFS REM (2016-2020)

Participants: Pascal Denis [correspondent], Bo Li

With colleagues from the linguistics departments at Lille 3 and Neuchâtel (Switzerland), Pascal Denis is a member of another ANR project (REM), funded through the bilateral ANR-NFS Scheme. This project, co-headed by I. Depreatere (Lille 3) and M. Hilpert (Neufchâtel), proposes to reconsider the analysis of English modal constructions from a multidisciplinary perspective, combining insights from theoretical, psycho-linguistic, and computational approaches.

EFL (2010-2020)

Pascal Denis is an associate member of the Laboratoire d'Excellence Empirical Foundations of Linguistics (EFL), http://www.labex-efl.org/.