Winner of the 1^st ELECT LRC European Localisation Scholar Award

This year was the first year of the ELECT LRC European Localisation Scholar Award. This award, sponsored by IBM and created under the auspices of the European Union’s ELECT project, seeks to find the most promising research proposal submitted by a student entering into a postgraduate research degree at a European educational institution and to reward this student in a way that will assist in the completion of their research and studies.

The winner of the inaugural European Localisation Scholar award was Aoife O’ Gorman. Her proposal, “French Question Answering in Technical and Open Domains,” aims to study and characterise systematically differences between French and English from the perspective of QA, working within both open and closed domains. Aoife is currently conducting research at the University of Limerick toward a Masters of Science.

“I am absolutely delighted to have won the ELECT LRC European Localisation Scholar Award,” said Aoife. “It is a great honor and I would like to thank both the LRC and IBM.” The award presentation ceremony took place on Monday 17th November as part of the International Localisation Research Conference where Aoife was presented with a top of the range IBM Thinkpad laptop, the ultimate research tool.

The panel also decided to give a special mention to the author of the proposal, “Evaluation of LOTS Online as an e-learning Localisation Tools Facility for Localisation Professionals", Rafael Guzmán. Rafael has submitted this proposal to Dublin City University in part-fulfilment of the requirements for a Master of Science degree. 

The members of the judging panel were: Dr Pat O’Sullivan, IBM Ireland, Ray Loughran, IBM Ireland, Dr Tim Altanero, Austin Community College, Texas, USA and Dr Alan Barrett, TILP.