PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Kemal Oflazer

Kemal Oflazer is a Teaching Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute whose research covers computational morphology, language processing for low-resource languages and large language models. After a PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon, they taught at Bilkent University in Ankara from 1989 to 2000, where noticing that Turkish had no spell-checker set the direction of their research, and then at Sabancı University in Istanbul until 2008. From 2008 to 2024 they held a post at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, led the campus's natural language processing research effort and served as associate dean for research from 2014 to 2021. In 2018 they co-edited a Springer book on Turkish natural language processing with Murat Saraçlar, and in 2023 they coauthored an EMNLP paper that tests ChatGPT's morphology in four languages. They direct Carnegie Mellon's Master of Computational Data Science program.

Timeline

  1. 1989–2000

    Teaching at Bilkent University

    After a PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon and bachelor's and master's degrees at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, they join Bilkent University in Ankara in 1989. In the early 1990s they notice there is no Turkish spell-checker and begin research on Turkish natural language processing with graduate students.

  2. 1996–1999

    Finite-state recognition and parsing

    Their paper 'Error-tolerant Finite-state Recognition with Applications to Morphological Analysis and Spelling Correction' appears in Computational Linguistics in 1996. A 1999 paper, 'Dependency Parsing with an Extended Finite State Approach', appears in the proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

  3. 2000–2008

    Joining Sabancı University

    They join Sabancı University in Istanbul in 2000 and stay until 2008. Across their posts in Turkey, they lead many Turkish natural language processing projects funded by NATO, the EU and TUBITAK, the Turkish National Science Foundation.

  4. 2008–2024

    Leading NLP research in Qatar

    They hold a post at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar from 2008 to 2024. From 2008 they lead the campus's natural language processing research effort with a team of postdocs and research associates, and by 2014 they have led or co-led six Qatar National Research Fund projects.

  5. 2014–2021

    Associate dean for research

    Carnegie Mellon names them associate dean for research at its Qatar campus in December 2014. In 2021 they step down as associate dean for research and continue as a teaching professor of computer science.

  6. 2018

    A Springer book on Turkish NLP

    With co-editor Murat Saraçlar of Bogazici University in Istanbul, they spend more than four years working with researchers to bring together 25 years of work on Turkish natural language processing. Springer publishes the book in 2018 in print and online.

  7. 2023

    A wug test for ChatGPT

    They are one of 13 authors of 'Counting the Bugs in ChatGPT's Wugs: A Multilingual Investigation into the Morphological Capabilities of a Large Language Model', published in the proceedings of EMNLP 2023 in Singapore. The paper applies a version of Berko's wug test to ChatGPT in English, German, Tamil and Turkish and finds that ChatGPT massively underperforms purpose-built systems, particularly in English.

  8. As of October 2026

    Teaching professor at LTI

    They are a Teaching Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute and serve as director of its Master of Computational Data Science program. Their research covers computational morphology, language processing for low-resource languages and the capabilities of large language models in generating semantically novel and morphologically complex forms.

Career

  1. Since 2008Carnegie Mellon UniversityLeader, Natural Language Processing Research Effort
  2. 2000–2008Sabancı University
  3. 1989–2000Bilkent University

Education

  1. Carnegie Mellon UniversityPhD
  2. Middle East Technical UniversityBachelor's degree

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Carnegie Mellon University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Kemal Oflazer - About sites.google.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. CMU-Q professor compiles research on Turkish Natural Language Processing - Gulf Times m.gulf-times.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Error-tolerant Finite-state Recognition with Applications to Morphological Analysis and Spelling Correction - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Dependency Parsing with an Extended Finite State Approach - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Personal Mention - The Piper - Carnegie Mellon University cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Carnegie Mellon announces new senior associate deans - Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar qatar.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Counting the Bugs in ChatGPT's Wugs: A Multilingual Investigation into the Morphological Capabilities of a Large Language Model - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Kemal Oflazer - Language Technologies Institute - School of Computer Science - Carnegie Mellon University lti.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Program Leadership - SCS Business Office - SCS Computing Facilities scsdean.cs.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.