Trevor Adriaanse

Adjunct Professor

Who had the greatest influence on your education and/or career path?

I am fortunate to be stuck here: there are many people who have had a positive impact on my education and career at different times in my life!

What drew you to NLP?

After college, I wanted to pursue a master’s degree that tapped into my background in math and linguistics. I studied computational linguistics as a part-time student that exposed me to some foundations in NLP, and at the same time, opportunities at work allowed me to explore applications of NLP to real-world problems. I was very fortunate to stumble on NLP at the exact time it was experiencing a revolution from neural-based approaches.

What do you enjoy most about your work with DSAN?

This is an easy question. I enjoy learning alongside my students. In each of my classes, the palpable sense of community that DSAN students naturally bring into the room—through their curiosity and willingness to tackle challenging problems and support their classmates—makes sharing stories with them such a wonderful part of my life. 

What’s the first piece of advice you would give to a DSAN student?

Being a student today is different from when I was a student just a few years ago. Nowadays, there is great pressure to be more productive because of AI’s injection into many software development workflows, and this must be difficult for students who are addressing the competing demands of learning material thoughtfully while witnessing a culture committing to efficiency, sometimes at the expense of careful understanding. The shifting headwinds of the job market make things ever more difficult.

Despite all this, I would advocate for time away from the computer. My advice would be to not subscribe to the efficiency-obsessed culture more and more present in software development, instead giving time in the face of these challenges to discover what you like to do. I do not mean what you necessarily do for work but rather what defines you and how you spend your time. For many students, they have spent much of their lives in the classroom, and leaving that familiar setting brings a new part of life where there isn’t a concrete ending (a graduation date, for example) in sight, so that may be new and even unsettling. Take time in those moments to discover what you like to do.