School Overview & Development History
The MUC National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center for Minority Languages was initiated by the Language and Information Department of the Ministry of Education for which the Department of Education and Science of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and MUC were invited to establish jointly. In June 2008, a corresponding research institute was established for it at MUC. The main task of the institute is to conduct dynamic monitoring and research regarding the use of ethnic minority languages and to submit the monitoring research results to the National Language Commission, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, and other competent departments for reference in their work in formulation and adjustment of national-level ethnic language policies and so on, research on ethnic language harmony and policy planning, information processing and standard construction of ethnic languages as well as providing technical support for the informatization application of ethnic languages.
The center's main work includes the collection, sorting, research, and processing of ethnic minority nationality language resources and related investigations, statistics, monitoring, and objective descriptions about language application of minority language resources. The center's work mainly involves language work related to Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur, Kazakh, Korean, Zhuang, Yi, Dai, Ke, and other languages. The institute monitors multi-source media information resources, including content found on the internet, newspapers, periodicals, books, teaching materials, radio, television, and more. The institute studies the relationship between national languages, analyzes and researches public opinions regarding national languages. Related and integrated research results, such as monitoring and language harmony, are publicly released. As of 2017, the center has publicly released dozens of national language life monitoring reports to the public, submitted consultation reports to relevant national ministries and commissions for which 17 variants were adopted. The center also undertook the regular reporting task work pertaining to "linguistic information" undertaken by the National Language Commission.
Majors & Programs
At present, the center has formed an interdisciplinary program with special "computational linguistics" characteristics offering doctoral and postdoctoral work. It also offers a "Computer Software and Theory" (master's degree) and Modern Education Technology (master's degree). Based on a good research foundation, the center takes a step further by integrating liberal arts and sciences. At present, it has trained/is training 7 doctoral graduates, 7 doctoral candidates, 18 academic/professional master graduates, 23 master candidates, and 2 on-the-job visiting students. The center recruits and trains linguistics and applied linguistics (computational linguistics) doctoral students (3 years of schooling), academic masters of computer science and technology (3 years of schooling), and masters of modern education technology (2 years of schooling). There is also a post-doctorate program in natural language processing and computational linguistics related majors. With a rigorous and open attitude, the center welcomes people with lofty ideals to join our research team.
Undergraduate Programs (4-Year Programs)
• None
Professional Master's Programs (2-Year Programs)
• None
Academic Master's Programs (3-Year Programs)
• Computer Science and Technology
• Modern Education Technology
Doctoral Programs (4-6 Year Programs)
• Computational Linguistics
Post-Doctoral Programs:
• Computational Linguistics
• Natural Language Processing
Other Specialized Coursework (Program Durations Vary)
• On the job visits
School Focus, Beliefs & Development Objectives
The center has been committed to promoting the development of informatization of domestic ethnic languages. It has established a Tibetan language research base together with Northwest University for Nationalities, Xinjiang Normal University, Xinjiang University, and Hohhot Institute for Nationalities. Other than this, it has promoted the construction of the Chinese Minority Language Resources Alliance. The center has continuously expanded its alliance system and influence through open discussion and has jointly undertaken major national topics' research and development tasks. The center undertook the 12th-16th rounds of the "Chinese Minority Language Information Processing Academic Seminar" organized by the Information Society of China.
The center also handled the first minority National language segmentation technology evaluation, referred to as "MLWS2017," to promote ethnic language informatization. The center presides over key projects of the National Natural Science Foundation, the National Science and Technology Support Project, the National Social Science Fund Project, the Ministry of Education, the National Language Commission, the National Civil Affairs Commission, and other provincial and ministerial level projects. In total, more than 30 major projects are being handled by the center, and their scientific research results have received widespread attention from academic circles and all walks of life. For example, it has been used for the civil public opinion gathering and monitoring system commissioned by Xinhua News Agency, the Mongolian and Chinese bilingual comparison corpus commissioned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and by Mongolian script coding and conversion software development initiatives and more. All have resulted in real-world practical usage. Practical application products have been commissioned by groups such as the Inner Mongolia Committee of Civil Affairs, Shanghai Normal University, Hohhot Institute for Nationalities, HKUST Xunfei Information Technology Co., Ltd., China Agricultural Audiovisual Publishing House, and other units. The project has been put to use at the entrusting unit, and now there are more than 10 software systems developed and successfully completed by the center.
Our Talent
The center faculty includes 2 Professors, 4 Associate Professors, and 9 other instructors with doctoral degrees.
Full-Time Staff: 15
Professors: 2
Staff with Masters and Doctoral Degrees: 13
Academic Exchanges and Cooperation at Home and Abroad
The center is broadly focused on localizing computer programs used at the internation level for ethnic minority nationality languages and so on.
Examples of Internationally Active Scholars
Zhao Xiaobing (赵小兵), Han Ethnicity
Professor (Master, Doctoral Supervisor)
Computational Linguistics
About
From 1984-1988, she studied in the Computer Department of Inner Mongolia University and obtained a bachelor's degree. From 2001 to 2003, she studied at the Graduate School of Information Industry, Cheongwoon University, South Korea, and obtained a master's degree in "Artificial Intelligence". From 2004 to 2007, she studied at Beijing Language and Culture University and received a doctorate degree in "Computational Linguistics." She won the third prize of Inner Mongolia Science and Technology Progress Award for her work on the earliest realization of the "Mongolian Windows System." Presided over the key projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and developed a cross-language online public opinion monitoring system.
Key Projects
• Representative of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress
• Member of the Academic Committee of MUC
• Director of Chinese Information Society of China
• Executive Director of Chinese Language Modernization Society
• Deputy Director of the National Language Information Processing Committee of the Chinese Information Society of China
• Deputy Director, Minority Languages Committee of Chinese Language Modernization Society
• Deputy Director of the Academic Committee of "The 11th-15th Chinese Minority Language Information Processing Symposium"
• Chairman of CCL&NLP-NABD 2016 and CCL&NLP-NABD 2018
Wang Zhijuan (王志娟), Ethnicity
Associate Professor (Master's Tutor)
Computational Linguistics
About
Wang Zhijuan earned a bachelor degree from Jilin University in July 2000 and a PhD degree from Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in April 2005. She has been editor-in-chief of academic monographs and 1 textbook and has participated in the compilation of 4 monographs and 1 textbook. She published more than 40 academic papers and retrieved more than 20 EI and ISTP recognitions. She has been authorized for 3 invention patents and 3 software copyrights. She won the first prize, the third prize of the National Civil Affairs Commission amongst other prizes.
Research Interests & Activity
Computer software, minority language information processing
Key Projects
Member of Computer Society, Member of Chinese Information Society, Specially Invited Expert of Hainan Prefecture Tibetan Information Technology Research Center, Qinghai Province.
Yan Xiaodong (闫晓东), Ethnicity
Associate Professor (Master's Tutor)
Computational Linguistics
About
Yan Xiaodong is an Associate Professor at the MUC School of Information Engineering. She is also a master supervisor and a member of the Chinese Information Society. She earned a Ph.D. from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 2006, and after that, she began working at the MUC School of Information Engineering. She has been working as a researcher in the Minority Language Sub-center of the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center of Minzu University since 2008. She mainly focuses on research involving natural language processing and intelligent network applications while also taking part in numerous state-sponsored research initiatives.
She has been editor-in-chief and published 3 monographs, participated in the compilation of 2 monographs and translations. She also has two software copyrights and one national-level invention patent. She has published more than 40 papers in academic journals and conferences at home and abroad, including more than 30 papers retrieved by SCI and EI.
Research Interests & Activity
Software theory and language knowledge engineering.
School Slogan
Official Website: https://nmlr.muc.edu.cn/
