NLP and Machine Learning Expert Needed for Stanford University Research

I am currently conducting a study on the development of the netroots movement in the Democratic Party.? I am studying the adoption and use of organizing technologies among movement activists.? I need an expert in natural language processing and/or machine learning to work with me on an ongoing basis to identify the technologies and search for how people talk about these technologies within a large email corpus.? Another part of the project is to identify organizing patterns from people's conversations. I would also like to create a machine learning model that learns from the way in which I tag random samples of the corpus and assigns probability distributions to the likelihood that a particular word or phrase string represents a given abstract construct.? Then, I'd be able to use that model to tag the entire corpus for that specific construct automatically.? It would be ideal to have a compelling GUI for this purpose so that the information may be customized by message, actor, time period, etc.? Also, it would be ideal to have the means of normalizing the data to make it comparable across actors and emails. It would be ideal if you were located in the San Francisco bay area, but I would be willing to work with people elsewhere.? Also, it would be great if you shared the same enthusiasm I have for politics and technology. The project has no set end date, as I will need assistance of various kinds between now and the termination of the project in June 2009.? I welcome bids either for the project as a whole or in modular form such that we set the prices of the various components to be completed as time proceeds. One requirement that is a must is that you must have time available to do a quick turnaround should I ever request something.? I know that there are reasonable time frames for coding, but I would rather avoid someone whose work so consumes his or her time that s/he is unable to dedicate time to my project. ## Deliverables I need someone who can commit the time to working with me on a part-time and sporadic basis between now and June 2009. I have included examples of some of the file types below.