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MDS Spotlight: Meet Claudia Beth Ong, MDS Computational Linguistics, Class of 2024

Claudia Beth Ong’s interest in data science actually stemmed from her interest in linguistics.

“Out of all the subjects I took, I was most interested in linguistics and when choosing my Bachelor’s degree, I chose Data Science because I wanted to do something related to both Mathematics and Linguistics,” Ong explained.

While doing her undergraduate degree, Ong discovered Natural Language Processing (NLP), which then led her to Data Science.

Master of Data Science Computational Linguistics Claudia Beth Ong

It was while completing her Bachelor’s in Science, in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence from Nanyang Technological University Singapore that Ong was met with a dilemma: starting a job or pursuing her Master’s of Data Science in Computational Linguistics.

Ong discovered UBC’s Master of Data Science in Computational Linguistics program way back in her second year.

“It was during a conversation with my friends – we were talking about our future plans and whether any of us would consider graduate studies rather than immediately finding a job when we graduate in 2023. At that point, I casually searched up Master’s in NLP programs and I found this one, but I never really considered it seriously until January 2023, about 10 days before the deadline,” said Ong.

If Ong was not doing her Master’s in Computational Linguistics, she would either be working or considering pursuing a PhD in NLP. However, she wasn’t interested in the job she was about to start nor was she interested in the time commitment required for a PhD     . “Getting accepted to MDS Computational Linguistics was really a great opportunity for me to get into NLP and see if I was really interested in it.”

What attracted Ong to the MDS Computational Linguistics program was the variety of courses in the curriculum that aligned with her interest in NLP.

“I really wanted to go in depth and the MDS Computational Linguistics syllabus offered that. Courses like Computational Morphology and Parsing for Computational Linguistics really piqued my interest,” she added.

One of Ong’s favourite courses was Advanced Corpus Linguistics.;

“I really liked the course because we had the freedom to choose any subject we wanted, and my groupmates were so creative to choose to focus on slang. It is definitely one of the courses that I won’t forget even after 10 years!” she said.

Another reason she applied to UBC was because Ong wanted some overseas experience outside of Singapore. She felt that the 10-month structure and learning in-person gave Ong enough time to expose herself to life in Canada.

“It was much more rewarding to be able to fly all the way from Singapore to Vancouver and do the program in-person. In fact, if the program was a fully remote one, I would not have taken it up. Having the opportunity to do this program fully in-person was so nice and I actually enjoyed being able to talk to everyone in the teaching team personally, such as asking questions during/after lectures and also discussing relevant material with my classmates.”

Post program, Ong has secured a position as a Large Language Model Research & Development Engineer in Huawei Singapore.

“The MDS Computational Linguistics program has helped me so much to kickstart my career in NLP, which is something I always aspired to do but didn’t have enough experience when I had just graduated from my Bachelor’s,” she said.

Claudia’s Top 3 Tips on Succeeding in the MDS Computational Linguistics Program:

  1. Balance work and fun: Keep the weekends for fun and promise yourself to not do any work (wherever possible!). Since assignments are due every Saturday, spend the weekdays trying to finish up as much work as possible and then have lots of fun on the weekends, you deserve it!
  2. Make friends and connections: The classmates and faculty in Computational Linguistics are truly great people and I have learnt so much and also had lots of fun, which would not have been possible without the people. The material is half (or even less) of what I took away from the program; the memories and friends are so much more!
  3. Experiment and take risks: I did multiple extra projects during my time in MDS Computational Linguistics with the help of the teaching team, and being the block rep for Block 6 also allowed me to organize some extra-curricular activities for the class. It was tons of fun and allowed me to do something for everyone beyond classwork. 

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