People
Faculty Members
Carole D. Hafner |
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Professor Hafner's primary research areas are knowledge representation, natural-language processing, and legal informatics. She recently developed a framework for ontology design and explored its applicability to text analysis and retrieval. Through this research, she has extended ontology models already used in the knowledge-representation and knowledge-sharing fields. The project also has resulted in a computational model of experimental biology knowledge and a prototype system for intelligent information retrieval from a corpus of research articles. This work builds on Professor Hafner's earlier development of the Datalog system for natural-language responses to questions, based on a conceptual framework for understanding knowledge encoded in databases.
Professor Hafner was among the first researchers to apply artificial intelligence to law. Recently, she cowrote a series of articles revealing serious flaws in legal case-based reasoning models, showing how incorporating contextual knowledge would improve case-based reasoners' accuracy. She is also creating "intelligent assistant" technology for legal research and drafting, and serves as coeditor of Artificial Intelligence and Law, an international journal.
Currently, Professor Hafner is adapting her knowledge-representation framework to help improve computers' ability to recognize and respond to jargon in text. In addition, she is leading an effort to create an information science program to complement Northeastern's existing computer science track.
Career Publication Highlights
Hafner, Carole D. 1981. An information retrieval system based on a computer model of legal knowledge. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press.
Hafner, Carole D., and Donald H. Berman. 1993. Representing teleological concepts in case-based legal reasoning: The missing link. In proceedings, Fourth international conference on artificial intelligence and law. New York: ACM Press.
Hafner, Carole D., and Kurt Godden. 1985. Portability of syntax and semantics in datalog. ACM Transactions on Information Systems 3, no. 2:141-164