richard burns ph.d.

Research Interests

Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Data Mining

Dissertation

• Automated Intention Recognition of Grouped Bar Charts in Multimodal Documents
  Burns, Richard J..
  University of Delaware, ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 2013.
  [proquest] [pdf]

Refereed Publications

• Context is Key: Aligning Large Language Models with Human Moral Judgments through Retrieval-Augmented Generation
  Matthew Boraske, Richard Burns
  In Proceedings of the 38th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS), 2025. Full Paper Acceptance Rate: 38%
  [doi]
• Intergenerational Classification of Reddit Comments Based on Slang and Emoji Usage
  James Dracup, Richard Burns
  In Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of The Pennsylvania Association of Computer and Information Science Educators (PACISE), pp. 54-60, 2025.
  Best Graduate Student Paper Award
• Statewise Twitter Sentiment Analysis of 2020 US Presidential Election using Apache Spark
  Prathyusha Dongari, Richard Burns
  Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of The Pennsylvania Association of Computer and Information Science Educators (PACISE '21), pp. 44-51, 2021.
  Best Graduate Student Paper Award
• Towards Understanding the Role of Information Graphics in Multimodal Documents
  Stephanie Elzer Schwartz, Richard Burns.
  Presented at International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA), S202 - Multimodality: Evaluation and Application, 2021.
• Containerizing CS Learning Environments
  Linh Ngo, Richard Burns, Si Chen
  The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, Volume 36, Number 3, pp. 169, October 2020.
• An Automated Approach for the Recognition of Intended Messages in Grouped Bar Charts
  Richard Burns, Sandra Carberry, Stephanie Elzer Schwartz
  Computational Intelligence (COIN), 35:955-1002, 2019.
  [doi]
• Physical Exercise Instructions: Unlocking the Key to Injury-Free Workouts using Natural Language Processing
  Matthew Leinhauser, Richard Burns
  Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of The Pennsylvania Association of Computer and Information Science Educators (PACISE '19), pp. 91-97, 2019.
• Sentiment Analysis of Emoji on Twitter
  Matthew Bonham, Richard Burns
  Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of The Pennsylvania Association of Computer and Information Science Educators (PACISE '18), pp. 96-100, 2018.
  Best Undergraduate Student Paper Award
• Exploring the Types of Messages that Pie Charts Convey in Popular Media
  Richard Burns, Eric Balawejder, Wiktoria Domanowska, Stephanie Elzer Schwartz, Sandra Carberry
  Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on the Theory and Application of Diagrams (Diagrams '16), pp. 265-271, 2016.
  [springer]
• Exploring the Automatic Recognition of Pie Chart Information Messages
  Eric Balawejder, Tyler Traub, Richard Burns
  Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of The Pennsylvania Association of Computer and Information Science Educators (PACISE '16), pp. 52-58, 2016.
  Best Graduate Student Paper Award
• Classifying Salient Textual Entities in the Headlines and Captions of Grouped Bar Charts
  Richard Burns, Sandra Carberry, Stephanie Elzer Schwartz
  Proceedings of the 28th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS '15), pp. 217-220, 2015.
  [aaai]
• Analyzing the Effect of Communicative Evidence in a Bayesian System for Grouped Bar Chart Message Recognition
  Richard Burns, Sandra Carberry, Stephanie Elzer Schwartz
  Proceedings of the 27th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS '14), pp. 14-17, 2014.
  (Best Poster Nominee: 3 nominated out of 44)
  [aaai]
• Reflections from a Computational Service Learning Trip to Haiti
  Richard Burns, Wanda Eugene, Tiffany Barnes, Stephen Chandler, Megan Harwell, Osarieme Omokaro
  The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 29(3), pp. 43-50, January 2014.
  [acm]
• Modeling a Graph Viewer's Effort in Recognizing Messages Conveyed by Grouped Bar Charts
  Richard Burns, Sandra Carberry, Stephanie Elzer Schwartz
  Proceedings of the 21st Conference of User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP '13), pp. 114-126, 2013.
  Acceptance Rate: 32%
  [springer] [pdf]
• Towards Adapting Information Graphics to Individual Users to Support Recognizing Intended Messages
  Richard Burns, Stephanie Elzer Schwartz, Sandra Carberry
  First International Workshop on User-Adaptive Visualization (WUAV at International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization: UMAP '13), pp. 1-4, 2013.
  [ceur] [pdf]
• Building Technology Fluency: Fostering Agents of Change
  Wanda Eugene, Shaundra Bryant Daily, Tiffany Barnes, Richard Burns
  Proceedings of the 120th American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition (ASEE '13), 2013.
• What is Being Measured in an Information Graphic?
  Seniz Demir, Stephanie Elzer, Richard Burns, Sandra Carberry.
  Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics (CICLing '13), pp. 501-512, 2013.
  Acceptance Rate: 26%
  [springer]
• Book Chapter: "Information Graphics in Multimodal Documents"
  Sandra Carberry, Stephanie Elzer, Richard Burns, Peng Wu, Daniel Chester, Seniz Demir.
  Multimedia Information Extraction: Advances in Video, Audio, and Imagery Analysis for Search, Data Mining, Surveillance and Authoring.
  Wiley-IEEE Computer Science Press, Mark T. Maybury ed., 2012.
  ISBN-13: 978-1118118917
  [url]
• Automatically Recognizing Intended Messages in Grouped Bar Charts.
  Richard Burns, Sandra Carberry, Stephanie Elzer and Daniel Chester.
  Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on the Theory and Application of Diagrams (Diagrams '12), pp. 8-22, 2012.
  Best Student Paper Award
  Acceptance Rate: 30%
  [springer] [pdf]
• An Experience Report on Cross-Semester Student Critique and Action in an Integrated Software Engineering, Service Learning Course.
  Richard Burns, Terry Harvey, Lori Pollock.
  First International Workshop on Software Engineering Education based on Real-World Experiences (EduRex at International Conference on Software Engineering: ICSE '12), pp 21-24, 2012.
  [ieee] [doi] [pdf]
• Integrating Hard and Soft Skills: Software Engineers Serving Middle School Teachers.
  Richard Burns, Lori Pollock, Terry Harvey.
  Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '12), pp. 209-214, 2012.
  Acceptance Rate: 35%
  [doi] [pdf]
• Visual and Spatial Factors in a Bayesian Reasoning Framework for the Recognition of Intended Messages in Grouped Bar Charts.
  Richard Burns, Sandra Carberry, Stephanie Elzer.
  Papers from the AAAI Workshop on Visual Representations and Reasoning, Technical Report WS-10-07, pp. 6-13, 2010.
  [aaai]
• Modeling Relative Task Effort for Grouped Bar Charts.
  Richard Burns, Stephanie Elzer and Sandra Carberry.
  Proceedings of the 31th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci '09), pp. 2292-2297, 2009.
  Acceptance Rate: 32%
  [cogsci]
• Processing Information Graphics in Multimodal Documents.
  Richard Burns, Sandra Carberry and Stephanie Elzer.
  Papers from the AAAI Fall Symposium: Multimedia Information Extraction, Technical Report FS-08-05, pp. 5-9, 2008.
  [aaai]
• Estimating Effort for Trend Messages in Grouped Bar Charts.
  Richard Burns, Stephanie Elzer and Sandra Carberry.
  Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on the Theory and Application of Diagrams (Diagrams '08), pp. 353-356, 2008.
  [acm] [pdf]
• The Role of Cognitive Modeling in an Automated System for Understanding Bar Charts.
  Stephanie Elzer, Richard Burns and Sandra Carberry.
  Proceedings of the Workshop on Cognitive Models of Human Spatial Reasoning (at Spatial Cognition: SC '08), pp. 1-6, 2008.
  [citeseerx]