Beyond Watson: Claudia Pearce ’89 M.S., ’94 Ph.D., Computer Science

Computers can crunch mind-boggling arrays of data. They can even win quiz shows. But are there more powerful applications of this analytical power yet to come? Claudia Pearce ’89 M.S., ’94 Ph.D., computer science, is the Senior Computer Science Authority at the National Security Agency (NSA). The winner of UMBC’s Alumna of the Year Award in Engineering and Information Technology in 2014, Pearce is diligently seeking the answer to that question. Watson is IBM’s Deep Question Answering system. You might recall that when Watson was put to the test against human contestants on the television quiz show,Jeopardy!, the system successfully… Continue Reading Beyond Watson: Claudia Pearce ’89 M.S., ’94 Ph.D., Computer Science