Aalok Sathe, '21

In the past year, Aalok worked on a psycholinguistics experiment, presented phonetics research at a workshop in Japan, and started to learn about neural networks in language processing through an independent study course. Not bad for a year!

Aalok's interest in linguistics began when he participated in the Panini (Indian) Linguistics Olympiad, "PLO", a linguistics logic problems competition. He then went on to represent his country, India, at the International Linguistics Olympiad, "IOL", at Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria (2015), and Mysore, India (2016), where he earned bronze medals both the years. Ever since, Aalok has been a member of the Problem Design Committee and the Jury for PLO, the competition that selects team India to compete at IOL each year. 

Raised in a polylingual household, Aalok knows four languages: English, Marathi (his mother tongue), Hindi, and Sanskrit.

Aalok is intrigued by complex systems of all kinds, be it language, the brain, ant colonies, or human society. As a sophomore majoring in computer science and cognitive science double major, he wishes to go closer to understanding how the brain is able to do all that it does, and specifically, how the brain understands, processes, and produces language, and how language can be modeled using math and technology.