Carnegie Mellon University
School of Computer Science  ›  Language Technologies Institute  ›  Academics  ›  LTI Concentration/LTI Minor

Language Technologies Concentration (for CS undergraduates) and Language Technologies Minor (for undergraduates anywhere else in the university)

Students in our Undergraduate Concentration and Minor programs have the opportunity to build on their undergraduate program requirements not only by learning more about this burgeoning field but also have the opportunity to do hands-on project work directed by one of our world famous faculty.  Please feel free to reach out to Undergraduate Program Director Carolyn Rose if you would like to talk about either program (cp3a@andrew.cmu.edu).

With the recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs), Human language technologies have become an increasingly central component not only of the field of computer science, but also a suite of key enabling technologies for work in every field. The work of our LTI faculty is impacting the human-critical fields of Education, Medicine, Law, and Finance. Just as a few examples, Dialog systems/chatbots, Information retrieval in many forms, machine translation and speech technologies are used daily by the general public. The LTI prepares students for this world by offering a minor that gives you the opportunity to not only learn about language technologies, but to also apply that knowledge through a directed project and prepares you for lucrative career options, either in this field or just about any other.

Students interested in the language technologies concentration or minor must complete our prerequisite courses with an average grade of B (3.0) or better before applying to the program. (Students who do not meet this average must submit a letter of explanation along with their application.) Prerequisites include:

  • Principles of Imperative Computation (15-122)
  • Principles of Functional Programming (15-150)

We also strongly encourage candidates to take:

  • Differential and Integral Calculus (21-120) and Integration and Approximation (21-122)
  • Matrices and Linear Transformations (21-241) or Matrix Theory (21-242)
  • Probability and Computing (15-259) or Probability (21-325) or Probability Theory for Computer Scientists (36-218) or Introduction to Probability Theory (36-225)

The Language Technologies Concentration and Minor requires that students complete one core course and their choice of three elective courses of at least 9 units each. The electives can be chosen from a specific set of stand-alone courses. In addition to the four courses, students in the Minor are required to do an undergraduate research project for at least 9 units.  Students in the concentration can either complete this requirement with a research project or an additional elective.

Core course:
Human Languages for AI (11-324)

Elective Courses:
Natural Language Processing (11-411)
Machine Learning in Practice (11-344)
Machine Learning with Graphs (11-441)
Search Engines (11-442)
Introduction to Deep Learning (11-485)
Grammar Formalisms (11-422)
ConLanging (11-423)
Subword Modeling (11-424)
Speech Technology for Conversational AI (11-492 or 11-692)
The Nature of Language (80-180)
Advanced Natural Language Processing (11-711)
Multimodal Machine Learning (11-777)
Speech Recognition and Understanding (11-751)
Multilingual Natural Language Processing (11-737)
Multimodal Affective Computing (11-776)
Large Language Models - Methods and Applications (11-667)

Students interested in earning a minor in language technologies must apply for admission no later than September 30 of their senior year. An admission decision will usually be made within one month. Students may petition the LTI undergraduate program director to be admitted to the minor earlier or later in their undergraduate careers. To apply, contact the program's director, Carolyn Rosé.