In this project, we aim at developing “TartanBotQ” a chatbot that can support conversation with students at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar in English mainly. In its first edition, TartanBotQ will be made available through a web-based platform, then it could be extended to other platforms such as Stellic or SIO. We aim at building a contemporary conversational chatbot that is user-friendly and possesses the capabilities to simulate human conversations while covering the different questions that students ask in the four programs offered here at CMUQ: Biological Sciences, Business Administration, Computer Science, and Information Systems, in addition to the Arts and Sciences. We will use different Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and Deep Learning methods to develop a high performance ChatBot. We will build a novel dataset that will allow to learn a generative model that takes a question in English as input and generates its relevant in context answer. The project will have different tasks and work packages: WP1: data collection and preprocessing; WP2: Baseline Chatbot design and development; WP3: Advanced ChatBot design and development; WP4: ChatBot Deployment; and WP5: Intrinsic Evaluation and Extrinsic Evaluation by CMUQ students and Faculty advisors. The results of this project would be of interest to CMUQ students and Faculty advisors. The project
will be done with our own CMUQ faculty and advisors in CMU Pittsburgh. Our own students will be testing the chatbot and reporting about its quality. The project could be easily extended to include other QF educational institutions (including Qatar Academy and other universities.) Also, this could become an e-learning platform, if we extend the dataset, we use further to cover detailed course contents. The chatbot could be also extended to cover other languages including Arabic, Urdu, etc. I plan on hiring current a couple of CMUQ students who have a solid NLP and machine learning background. I will also hire a research assistant to help designing all the experiments. I plan on disseminating and sharing the results of this project at international conferences, in refereed journal articles, and with relevant institutions in Qatar, such as QF Universities and academic institutions.