I am a Distinguished Assistant Professor working on Natural Language Processing and Digital Humanities at the Center for Integrated Japanese Studies, Tohoku University. My interests are machine learning and natural language processing with special focus on Asian low-resource languages as well as the intersection between Buddhist Studies and NLP applications. In 2025, I completed my PhD in computational linguistics at University of Duesseldorf, under the guidance of Oliver Hellwig and Kurt Keutzer. I have completed a bachelor’s degree in Indology and Sinology (2017) and a master’s degree in Buddhist Studies (2020) at University of Hamburg.

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Projects

Since 2023, I am part of the MITRA project, first as CTO and now as director in collaboration with Kurt Keutzer at Berkeley AI Research Lab (BAIR), UC Berkeley. In this project, we develop machine translation models as well as semantic search functionality, parallel passage detection, and OCR for Classical Asian languages.
Since 2018, I am working on the NLP technology and database system of the BuddhaNexus platform for the research of intertextual links within Buddhist sources, which is now continued as DharmaNexus.

News

• 2025: My dissertation was selected for the Best Dissertation of the Year 2025 award (Beste Dissertation des Jahres 2025) by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Duesseldorf.
• Dec 25, 2025: I was featured in the Kahoku Shimpo (河北新報) newspaper article “AIで仏教研究に新風” (A New Breeze in Buddhist Studies with AI), which covered my work on the Dharmamitra platform and my appointment as a Distinguished Assistant Professor at Tohoku University through the International Distinguished Researcher Track system. Article here.
• Dec 21, 2025: I presented “Translation, OCR, and Semantic Retrieval: Current Status and Future Outlook of the Dharmamitra Ecosystem” at the Buddhist Studies and Digital Humanities International Symposium (仏教学とデジタル・ヒューマニティーズ国際シンポジウム) in Tokyo. More information here.
• Dec 21, 2025: I presented “Dharmamitra: A Platform that Makes Translation and Discovery of Buddhist Texts Possible Across Language Barriers” as part of the panel “AI in the Fo Guang Dictionary of Buddhism English Translation Project and MITRA” at the 11th Symposium of Humanistic Buddhism. More information here.
• Dec 11, 2025: Our team was selected for a 2025 Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) award from Schmidt Sciences for the project “Connectivity and Individuality in Textual Traditions: Augmenting Retrieval for Eurasian Languages”. The project will build domain-aware retrieval and RAG methods for historical documents across eight under-served languages, including Buddhist canons in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan. More information here.
• Dec 3-4, 2025: I presented at the workshop and symposium “Building the Foundations of Buddhist Philology through Digital Humanities: Exploring the Potential of the Tohoku University Digital Archives (ToUDA)” at the Center for Integrated Japanese Studies, Tohoku University. More information here.
• Nov 2025: I joined the Board of Directors of the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC). Link.
• Nov 25, 2025: I gave the talk titled “From OCR via Machine Translation to Semantic Search: The Dharmamitra AI stack for Multilingual Buddhist Philology” at the Seoul National University AI Digital Humanities Center Overseas Researcher Invitation Forum. Mentioned in KADH news.
• Nov 12, 2025: I gave a talk for the Goodman Lecture Series No. 32 at the Khyentse Foundation on machine learning and Large Language Models in Buddhist Studies, with a focus on the tools that the Dharmamitra project offers the Buddhist Studies community. More information here.
• Sep 15, 2025: I presented my work at the National Taiwan University. My topic was: 數位人文與佛教語言資源：閱讀經典的新可能 (Digital Humanities and Buddhist Language Resources: New Possibilities for Reading the Classics).
• Sep 12, 2025: I presented Dharmamitra and DharmaNexus at Academia Sinica in Taiwan with a focus on translation, search, and multilingular intertextuality analysis. Here is the link to the workshop.
• Aug 18, 2025: I gave a talk for the Khyentse Lecture Series at ELTE in Budapest titled “Dharmamitra & DharmaNexus: A New Set of Digital Tools for the Philological Study of Buddhist Texts”.
• Aug 10-15, 2025: I presented on the panel “Machine Translation, Large Language Models, and Buddhist Studies” at the XXth Congress of the IABS, Leipzig, Aug. 10-15, 2025. The title of my talk was “MITRA: New Research Tools for a Paradigm shift in the Philological Study of Buddhist Texts based on Machine Translation Technology”.
• Jun 20, 2025: I gave a talk at the online workshop “Navigating Indra’s Net: Digital Approaches to Text Reuse-based Inter-textuality in Pre-Modern East Asian Texts” at the Hanmun Lab, Ruhr-Universität Bochum. The title was: “Is training deep neural embeddings worth the effort? A preliminary investigation of different representation methods for semantic similarity tasks in Buddhist Chinese and related languages of the Buddhist tradition”. More information here
• Jun 13, 2025: I gave two lectures at the International DH Workshop at Keio University, Tokyo: “From Sthiramati to Dharmamitra: Developing Digital Tools for a New Age of Philological Buddhist Studies” and “Practical Application of the Various MITRA Tools for Philological Research”. The workshop was held in hybrid format with simultaneous interpretation. Click here for more information.
• Jun 3, 2025: I have accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position at the Center for Integrated Japanese Studies, Tohoku University, starting October 2025, focusing on the intersection of Buddhist and Japanese Studies with machine learning and digital humanities.
• May 31, 2025: I have submitted my PhD thesis in Computational Linguistics at the University of Duesseldorf. The defense is scheduled for September 2025.
• Mar 14, 2025: Together with Xiang Wei and Marcus Bingenheimer, I will be conducting the workshop “Machine Translation for Asian Studies” at the AAS 2025 in Columbus, Ohio: click here
• Mar 13, 2025: I will present our work on MITRAsearch, an advanced new information retrieval system for Classical Asian Languages, at the CEAL Technology Forum in Ohio, Columbus.
• Mar 9, 2025: New paper accepted at NLP4DH 2025 (proceedings will follow soon): “MITRA-zh-eval: Using a Buddhist Chinese Language Evaluation Dataset to Assess Machine Translation and Evaluation Metrics”
• Dec 2024: Talk at the International Symposium on Buddhist Studies and Digital Humanities at the University of Tokyo: “MITRA Search: Exploring Buddhist Literature Preserved in Classical Asian Languages with Multilingual Approximate Search” on December 22nd, 2024, at Ito International Research Center. The symposium commemorates 100 Years of the Taishō Tripiṭaka and 30 Years of SAT.
• Nov 2024: Upcoming public online talk: I will present the Dharmamitra project as part of the “Manuscriptology and digital humanities online lecture series” at Heidelberg University on Friday, Nov 22th, 9am CET. Click here for the Zoom link and further details.
• Sep 2024: New publication out: Nehrdich, S., Hellwig, O., & Keutzer, K. (2024). “One Model is All You Need: ByT5-Sanskrit, a Unified Model for Sanskrit NLP Tasks.” In Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (Findings).
• Aug 2024: New publication out: Meelen, Marieke, Sebastian Nehrdich and Kurt Keutzer, “Breakthroughs in Tibetan NLP & Digital Humanities”, Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, no. 72, Juillet 2024, pp. 5-25.
• Nov 2023: New publication out: Nehrdich, Sebastian, Marcus Bingenheimer, Justin Brody and Kurt Keutzer. “MITRA-zh: An efficient, open machine translation solution for Buddhist Chinese.” NLP4DH (2023).