Baggett Post-Bac Fellowships and Summer Scholarships

"A big part of business is creativity. If you think of creativity as the juxtaposition of things that seem unrelated, the way to encourage your creativity is to learn about different things," says linguist, software executive and UMD Board of Trustees member David Baggett '92. This interdisciplinary approach to learning and his environment as a child were significant factors in his decision to study linguistics and computer science as an undergraduate. Although his father is an electrical engineer and his mother a freelance cookbook writer, both are "pretty versatile and I think that rubbed off on me," says Baggett.
 
To encourage more students to delve into linguistics research at Maryland, Baggett made a generous gift to the Department of Linguistics, creating the Baggett Fellowships and the Baggett Summer Scholarships. Baggett's deep affinity for his alma mater stems from the rich research opportunities he was afforded as an undergraduate at Maryland. "I had a number of really good research interactions with some of the faculty. If you give an undergraduate a chance to see what it's like to do real research, that's intoxicating and it's great practice."

As a young student, he had a keen interest in the fundamental study of how language works. In every human culture, Baggett says, "babies learn how to segment words pretty early. We see it all the time, but we don't think about it much. We have no idea how that mechanism works. It's fascinating!"
 
Computational linguistics, an interdisciplinary field that applies software to the study of language, became his focus. "I wanted to figure out what is that thing in your brain that enables you to learn language," says Baggett. The brain is incredibly complex, and how it works remains a mystery to scientists. For example, Baggett says, imagine finding a computer in the woods and the user cannot take it apart to see how it works. One can only type and see what happens on the screen. "It doesn't tell you much," he says, "but if you're clever about how and what you type, you could learn some things slowly. That's like the brain, a black box. Linguistics is trying to figure out how the brain works, but you can't really take it apart and analyze it at a micro-level."
 
Creativity is a common thread in Baggett's life. After graduating from Maryland, he began working on his doctorate in computational linguistics at MIT. However, an opportunity to put his creative juices to work developed and Baggett and his fellow classmates created Sony PlayStation's "Crash Bandicoot." This enormously popular computer game series was the beginning of a highly successful career in software development.
 
In 1997, Baggett and his MIT colleagues co-founded ITA Software. Anyone who has shopped for an airline ticket at an online site like Orbitz or through an airline's web page most likely used ITA Software's program. It allows an air traveler to produce a much greater scope of choices — different price ranges and levels of convenience. In April 2011, Google acquired ITA for $700M. 
 
After ITA, Baggett founded INKY, and is its CEO. INKY’s flagship product, INKY Phish Fence, uses computer vision and other machine learning techniques to identify and block phishing emails. Phishing is arguably the biggest problem in cybersecurity today, driving over $1.5B/year of theft and extensive PII and credential theft.
 
Baggett acknowledges the critical role of education in his business success. "I wanted to do something for linguistics in particular because it was so useful for me to have the interdisciplinary development. There's a certain intellectual purity to what the linguistics department is doing," says Baggett. "It's just a great environment that promotes inquisitiveness about very profound questions and day-to-day, very pragmatic concerns."

One-year Baggett Fellowships are year-long positions intended for individuals with a B.A. or B.S. degree who are interested in gaining significant research experience in an active interdisciplinary environment before pursuing graduate study in some area of linguistics or cognitive science. Up to two fellowship positions are available for the 2024-2025 year. Salary is competitive, with benefits included. Here is a list of our past Baggett Fellows.

Applicants must already have permission to work in the U.S. or be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, and should have completed a B.A. or B.S. degree or equivalent by the time of appointment (late Summer or Fall 2024), but should not have completed any graduate training. Previous experience in linguistics is required and relevant research experience is preferred. The ability to interact comfortably with a diverse group of people (and machines, where appropriate) is essential.

Baggett Fellows often work with several faculty members on collaborative research projects. The following Maryland Linguistics faculty can serve as mentors for the 2024-2025 fellowship year:

• Omar Agha (semantics, pragmatics)
• Naomi Feldman (computational psycholinguistics)
• Valentine Hacquard (semantics, language acquisition)
• Aron Hirsch (syntax, semantics, pragmatics, prosody)
• Ellen Lau (psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics)
• Kate Mooney (phonology, morphology)
• Colin Phillips (as co-mentor: language processing, neurolinguistics, language acquisition)
• Maria Polinsky (as co-mentor: syntax)
• Philip Resnik (as co-mentor: computational psycholinguistics, computational neurolinguistics)

Baggett Summer Scholarships are available to University of Maryland undergraduate students with prior training in linguistics who wish to pursue linguistics research in a more in-depth manner than is possible in the context of the classroom, and under close faculty supervision. A minimum commitment of eight weeks should be expected. We anticipate that these scholarships will be offered this year for Summer 2023.

Applicants must be currently enrolled University of Maryland undergraduates (no citizenship requirement) with some training in linguistics or cognitive science. Graduating seniors may apply, however preference will be given to freshmen, sophomores and juniors. Graduating seniors may want to consider applying for a Baggett Fellowship instead of, or in addition to, a Baggett Summer Scholarship.