Ruslan Mitkov

Timeline

1. 1974–1987

   Berlin and a Dresden doctorate

   From 1974 to 1979, he studies at Humboldt University in Berlin. In 1987, he receives his PhD at the Technical University of Dresden under Nikolaus Joachim Lehmann.

2. 1993–1994

   Humboldt Foundation fellowships

   Before coming to Wolverhampton, he is Research Professor at the Institute of Mathematics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In 1993 and 1994, he is a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, at Saarland University and the University of Hamburg.

3. 1995–1997

   Founding a Wolverhampton research group

   He joins the University of Wolverhampton in 1995. In 1997, he becomes Professor of Computational Linguistics and Language Engineering and founds the Research Group in Computational Linguistics, which he leads.

4. 1998

   Robust pronoun resolution

   He publishes “Robust Pronoun Resolution with Limited Knowledge” in 1998 in the joint proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 17th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, held in Montreal. Anaphora resolution is among the topics for which he is best known.

5. 2003

   Multiple-choice test generation

   In 2003, he and Le An Ha publish “Computer-Aided Generation of Multiple-Choice Tests” at the HLT-NAACL 03 Workshop on Building Educational Applications Using Natural Language Processing. Generating multiple-choice tests with computer aid is another topic for which he is best known.

6. 2011–2022

   Three honorary titles

   In November 2011, Plovdiv University awards him a Doctor Honoris Causa. In October 2014, Veliko Tarnovo University confers a Professor Honoris Causa on him, and in 2022 New Bulgarian University in Sofia awards him a third honorary title, Doctor Honoris Causa.

7. 2022

   The Oxford Handbook, second edition

   In June 2022, the second, substantially revised edition of The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics, edited by him alone, appears from Oxford University Press. In September 2022, the National Board of Medical Examiners in the USA presents him with a certificate of distinguished collaboration.

8. As of October 2026

   Professor at Lancaster University

   He is Professor of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University and Distinguished Professor at the University of Alicante, and the designer and director of the Erasmus Mundus Master’s programme in Technology for Translation and Interpreting. His Wolverhampton years include directing the Research Institute of Information and Language Processing and the Responsible Digital Humanities Lab. His recent research applies deep learning and large language models to natural language processing and translation technology.