The tech world is growing rapidly, and there is an increasing need for language experts from all different kinds of language disciplines. Patrick Kelley is returning to MSU to share his experiences in transitioning from academia to industry. He will talk about balancing your graduate life while working towards breaking into the job market, steps in shifting your academic skills and documents into industry standard language, and what life is like outside of academia.

Patrick Kelley recently received his PhD in Linguistics at MSU. He specialized in neurolinguistics using electroencephalography (EEG) to understand how language is processed in real time. Since his graduate studies, he has shifted gears from academic research. Currently, he works as a Language Engineer for Amazon Alexa Artificial Intelligence. As a Language Engineer, he applies his formal linguistic training in a technical fashion, constructing theoretical linguistic representations that are then coded into grammars that allow Alexa to interpret speech from users.