Jeff Ondich

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Classes

Professor of Computer Science and John E. Sawyer Professor of Liberal Learning
Carleton College
Northfield, MN 55057
jondich@carleton.edu
507 222-4364

Software

Much of my professional work involves software development, most of which is done in the context of Ultralingua, Inc. Ultralingua's most visible products are a collection of multi-lingual dictionary applications for iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Windows, and a long string of more-or-less obsolete platforms reaching back into the past. As of 2023, we have several dozen bilingual dictionaries involving the languages English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Latin, Esperanto, Polish, Dutch, Russian, Mandarin, and, of course, Klingon. We also sell phrasebooks and various other language-related tools.

Our products are driven by the Ultralingua Application Programming Interface (ULAPI), which is used in our own consumer products as well as by other software developers who need linguistic features in their software. See Assistiveware's Proloquo2Go, a multi-lingual augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) tool intended to be used by people with speech disabilities. Proloquo2Go uses ULAPI's lemmatization and inflection capabilities to help enable children to quickly and naturally compose complex sentences. In addition to lemmatization (mapping a derived form of a word to its root word, like "parlions" → "parler") and inflection (verb conjugation, plural formation, etc.), ULAPI can do number translation (e.g. "123" + "Spanish" → "ciento veintitrés"), and part-of-speech tagging. At a more abstract level, ULAPI is a morphological analysis and synthesis engine with many practical applications, and currently available in about a dozen languages.

Other projects

• I collaborate with the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate Dakotah Language Institute and Carleton's Linguistics Department on a variety of projects related to the preservation and revitalization of the Dakotah language.
• I have worked with Carleton's Sustainability office, exploring ways to contribute to the emerging field of Energy Analytics to help Carleton and others reduce their energy use and improve their building management. Two recent student projects in 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 have provided a tantalizing view of the potential power of energy analytics, along with some good infrastructure on which to build.
• I am writing in the areas of computer security, privacy, and the implications for society of the structure of the modern internet.

Service highlights

• President of the Faculty (2015-2018)
• Chair of the Computer Science Department (2007-2009, 2010-2011, 2020-2022)
• Co-chair of the Education and Curriculum Committee (2010-2012)
• Chair of the Academic Computing Advisory Committee (2003-2005, 2014-2015)
• Chair of a Curriculum Design Team (2007-2008; resulting revised graduation requirements went into effect 2010).