NLTSG ­ Officers Bios Alfred Vella MBCS ­ Chairman Dr Alfred Dominic…

NLTSG ­ Officers Bios

Alfred Vella MBCS ­ Chairman
Dr Alfred Dominic Vella BSc, BA, MSc, PhD CMath, CEng, FIMA, MBCS
Born in Birmingham to Maltese parents who emigrated a couple of years before I was born, I am
the second son out of four children two boys then two girls. Degrees in: Chemistry/Maths
BSc(London), Pure Mathematics PhD(OU), Computing MSc(Hertfordshire), Technology BA(Open).
Taught for the following universities: Open, Oxford Brookes, Staffordshire, Cranfield, Luton,
Buckingham, Hertfordshire, Liverpool, London, Singapore Institute of Management and Hong Kong
University: Supervised 100s of undergraduate, a couple of hundred MSc and around 20 PhDs.
Examined PhDs for Luton, Cranfield, Dundee, Cardiff, Imperial and the LSE. Been an external
examiner for the Open University and Wolverhampton University.


Masoud Aref MBCS ­ Treasurer
I have been active in the IT sector for the past 18 years: (90-97), ITCraft Ltd (97-03), London
Borough of Camden (03-Present). I became interested in natural language translation technologies
while developing multi-lingual websites at ITCraft Ltd. I would like to contribute to further
development of machine translation tools with particular reference to the needs of minority
languages communities to access and disseminate information.


Jon Riding MBCS CITP ­ Secretary
His initial encounters with computers began in the 1970s working as a system software engineer
with the Ministry of Defence but since 1989 Jon has been principal researcher at the Bible Society
where he leads a team developing systems to assist bible translators worldwide. He holds degrees
in Music, Classics and Computer Science which include an MPhil from Oxford Brookes (where he
is a Visiting Researcher) for work in automatic word-formation analysis. Particular interests include
language independent systems, mapping semantics within and across parallel corpora, word-
formation in languages with complex morphologies and tools for editors and translators working
with non-mainstream vernacular languages in the developing world.


Elina Lagoudaki MBCS ­ Membership Secretary
Elina holds a BSc in Translation from the Department of Foreign Languages, Translation and
Interpreting of Ionian University, Greece, and an MA in Development Administration from
Westminster Business School, UK. At present, she is completing a PhD research in user needs
identification for Translation Memory systems at Imperial College London. Her research interests
include translator-support software, translation resources, extraction of bilingual corpora from the
Web, usability issues in translation software and interaction of translation software with the
Internet. Elina is currently working as a translator and language consultant and has lengthy
experience in managing multilingual translation and localisation projects.


Chris Bates MBCS ­ Webmaster
I have been interested in computers and languages since an early age and my first degree was in
Modern Languages and Linguistics at Kent University; following this I took an Open University
degree course in IT and Computing.
For the last 10 years I have worked in IT development and support in the Civil Service, Accenture
and I now work as a software tester in a financial services company.
I live in Oxford where I am studying part-time for an MSc in Software Engineering. My interests
outside of computing are film, photography and architecture and I enjoy swimming and cycling.