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% \address{Department of CSE\\
% University at Buffalo\\
% 226 Bell Hall\\
% Buffalo,  NY  14260--2000}

\signature{Dr. Kenneth W.\ Regan}

\begin{letter}{Graduate Admissions Committee\\
Computer Science Department\\
Columbia University\\
Mudd Building\\
500 W 120th St\\
New York, NY 10027\\
Re: applicant Jerry Lee
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\opening{
\leftline{Dear Graduate Admissions Committee:}
}

\email{regan@buffalo.edu}

\url{www.cse.buffalo.edu/{\tiny$\sim$}regan/}

\room{326}
\phone{(716) 645-4738}


\signature{Kenneth W. Regan}


I am happy to provide a reference for Mr.\ Jerry Lee for his MS application to your department.  I know him as a student in my Spring 2019 course, ``CSE396: Introduction to the Theory of Computation.''  We have also conversed in office hours.  I am an Associate Professor with long happy service at UB.

As a required junior-year course in our department, CSE396's enrollment zoomed over 200 last term.  Mr.\ Lee earned a C+ which was close to the median.  He had an C+ at midterm as well.  A nice B+ on the second midterm exam offset a C on the final exam.   He completed all work in the course in a timely fashion.  He didn't flag in the last five weeks when Turing computability followed finite automata and grammars and undecidability proofs via reductions were highlighted, along with NP-completeness at the end---many others dropped off in the second prelim exam and afterward.

Mr. Lee has a very particular interest in the processing of natural language in AI and has opened discussions of possible research with my colleague Professor Rohini Srihari.  I am in fact supervising another student who is trying to apply spiking NNs to natural language, which seems to be a wide-open area.  We had a conversation while looking at computer science departments and their research projects that impressed me about his specificity.  He is interested in whether techniques associated with visual processing---and I might say, ``Gestalt'' factors in general---might improve natural language processing.  

Hence I am happy to recommend him even though his grade in my course was not B-or-better.  On a similar note, his grades have greatly improved overall in the past year after a rocky start that was marked by personal vicissitudes.  Thus his 3.2 overall average should be considered as 3.5+ in courses this year and last year overall.

I believe this makes him a good candidate for a Master's program, the kind of student for which such a course (rather than immediate job applications) is most appropriate.  He speaks well in person but his writing needs improvement.  I will be happy
to answer any further questions you may have.  



\closing{Yours sincerely}

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