Gaia Caligiore

Ph.D. Student

University of Catania, Italy

Ragusa

I am a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Catania, as a member of the Ph.D. program in 'Sciences of Interpretation' (Scienze dell’Interpretazione).

My research interests are rooted in a socio-semiotic and cognitive framework, with a primary focus on identifying and developing effective approaches for collecting and computationally annotating sign language data. More specifically, my goal is to establish the best strategies for processing Italian Sign Language (LIS) data in interdisciplinary contexts. This approach aims to create resources that not only represent LIS in its multilinear and multimodal nature, but also provide machine-readable and processable information.

I hold a Master's degree in Translation (LM-94), obtained in 2020, and a Bachelor's degree in Language Mediation and Intercultural Communication (L-12), obtained in 2018.

Beyond my academic pursuits, I find joy in activities like cooking, travelling, painting, pottery, indulging in pop culture, and spending quality time with cats and dogs.

About me

Research interests

Ph.D. Research Project

Challenges in Translating Italian Sign Language (LIS): A Computational Approach

My project focuses on tackling the challenges of translating Italian Sign Language (LIS) into written and spoken languages. This translation process not only involves converting between different languages, but also between different modalities and is approached from a computational perspective, with the goal of understanding the unique aspects of LIS and developing an algorithm for sign language recognition.

My research falls within the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) as I aim to discover the most effective methods for building sign language translation models, taking into account the intricate linguistic features of LIS. Additionally, I aim to assess how the various elements that co-shape signed discourse can be represented following multiple models, producing outputs that are both machine-readable and human-readable.

Academic curriculum vitae

Publications

Gaia Caligiore, Cristina Bosco and Alessandro Mazzei. 2021. «Building a Treebank in Universal Dependencies for Italian Sign Language.» A cura di Felice Dell'Orletta, Fabio Tamburini, Johanna Monti. CLiC-it 2020 Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics 2020. Bologna: CEUR Workshop Proceedings.
Sabina Fontana and Gaia Caligiore. 2021. «Italian Sign Language (LIS) and Natural Language Processing: an Overview.» A cura di Pierpaolo Basile, Valerio Basile, Danilo Croce, Elena Cabrio. Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Natural Language for Artificial Intelligence (NL4AI 2020) co-located with the 19th International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2020). Online: CEUR Workshop Proceedings.

Other Activities During the Ph.D.

Visiting Ph.D. Student at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen.
Research trainee at the University of Poitiers.
Guest researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen.

Oral Presentations at Conferences

Presentation of the article "Building a Treebank in Universal Dependencies for Italian Sign Language" at the CLiC-it 2020 Conference. Online.
Presentation of the article "Italian Sign Language and Natural Language Processing: an Overview", co-authored with Sabina Fontana, at the NL4AI 2021-AIxIA Workshop. Online.
Presentation of "La linguistica della LIS nell'esperienza dell'Università di Catania: strategie didattiche e percezione degli studenti" in collaboration with Erika Raniolo at the LV International SLI Congress. University of Bolzano, Bressanone.
Presentation of "Annotare la LIS all'Università: strategie degli apprendenti, criticità didattiche e implicazioni metodologiche" in collaboration with Gabriella Ardita at the Teaching LIS and LISt at the University Conference. Ca' Foscari University, Venice.

Presentation of "Italian Sign Language and Computational Linguistics: Searching for Common Ground" at the Sign Café 2 Conference. Special Teaching Structure of Ragusa in Foreign Languages and Literatures.
Presentation of "La Lingua dei Segni Italiana (LIS) e la costruzione di un dataset in ambito medico: riflessioni teoriche" at the WS3 Linguistica Teorica e Trattamento Automatico delle Lingue. LVI International SLI Congress. University of Turin, Turin.
Presentation of "Multimodal Collection of Italian Sign Language (LIS) in the Medical Domain: A Step Towards Language Documentation and Machine Translation" at the international conference Documenting languages, documenting cultures. Migration, minorities, dialects. University of Naples Federico II, Naples.

Poster Presentations at Conferences

Presentation of the poster "Comunicazione tra sordi e udenti in ambito medico: sfide e opportunità per un'assistenza sanitaria inclusiva" at the 5th National LIS Conference. "La Lingua dei Segni Italiana: patrimonio culturale o capitale umano?". University of Calabria, Rende (CS).
Presentation of the poster "Strategie di notazione delle lingue dei segni: processi spontanei all’interno e ai confini della Comunità segnante" at the international congress of the GSCP "La comunicazione parlata 2023. I venti anni del GSCP." University of Rome La Sapienza, Rome.

Participation in Summer Schools

Participation in the Corpus Linguistics Summer School 2022 - Centre for Corpus Research (CCR), July 4-7, University of Birmingham.
Participation in the REUNICE Summer School in Sustainable Science 2023 - July 10-14, University of Catania.

Affiliations