I 100% recommend taking NLP with Prof Meng if you are interested in understanding how NLP works, especially LLMs like ChatGPT. He is a great lecturer and didn't rush through content. I found it easy to keep up with his content and truly felt I could understand what he was saying, especially since he started each lecture with a brief recap of the previous lecture. There were no exams, just homeworks, a final project, and participation. It's really easy to get bonus points onto your grade by getting extra participation points. You have a lot of freedom with what you do for the final project, and the homeworks are really clear and straightforward.

This is actually a review for 6501 | Special Topics for Spring 2024 but since course forum is a bit dumb and is only listing Fall 2024 classes for some reason in the spring time (and somehow is not even listing Spring 2024 classes), this is being done in the 4501 spot. Prof. Meng is definitely THE BEST NLP professor and everyone seems to agree – he's extremely knowledgeable, and teaches cutting-edge information in the field with his research based approach. I really enjoy the research layout he did w/ guest speakers and paper presentations. The paper presentation was very useful and gives a thorough understanding of whatever niche of NLP you use, and personally it helped me better read/deep-read the rest of the papers in the course. Also, NLP is constantly changing and the only way to get ahead is by reading current research. I couldn't recommend Prof. Meng's class enough, and is probably one of the only good grad CS courses.

#tCFS24