Steven Gillis
Steven Gillis (PhD in Linguistics in 1984) is currently professor of Language Acquisition and Language Processing at the University of Antwerp, and co-director of the Center for Dutch Language and Speech (CNTS) http://www.cnts.ua.ac.be/cnts/.
For the last 20 years he has published about the acquisition of Dutch as a first language, mainly focusing on prelexical development and early phonological, morphological and syntactic acquisition and development. Currently his research efforts are especially geared towards early language and speech in deaf children with a cochlear implant.
He has a vivid interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning, especially the computer simulation of natural language acquisition. In this area, he was the first linguist to receive the IBM Award for Computer Science (in 1979).
He was involved in the CHILDES enterprise almost from its conception onwards, and is still hosting a CHILDES mirror at the University of Antwerp. He was also actively involved in a major effort that the Dutch and Flemish governments deployed for the collection of a corpus of present-day standard Dutch ('the Spoken Dutch Corpus').
He holds major research grants from Flemish and Belgian funding agencies (Fund for Scientific Research - FWO, Fund for Technological Innovation IWT), the Joint Research Fund Belgium ñ The Netherlands (VNC), as well as from the European Union.
He is currently vice-chair of the Research Council of the University of Antwerp, member of the Flemish Inter-university Council (Vlir), and member of the board of directors of the Institute for Dutch Lexicology (INL).
You can visit Steven's homepage at: http://www.cnts.ua.ac.be/~gillis/