Joyce Y. Chai

Joyce Y. Chai is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. She is an Associate Director of the Michigan Institute for Data & AI in Society (MIDAS) and affiliated with the Michigan Robotics Institute. Her research focuses on enabling situated communication with embodied AI agents through grounded language processing.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Computer Science from Duke University

Her research interests lie at the intersection of natural language processing, embodied AI, and human-robot communication. She investigates how sensorimotor experiences and social interactions shape language learning, aiming to develop pragmatically-rich, cognitively-motivated language technologies for real-world applications.

Scientific Awards:

• EECS Outstanding Achievement Award (2024)
• University of Michigan Outstanding Paper Award
• ACL (2023) Honorable Mention
• Amazon Alexa Prize Simbot Challenge (2023) - SEAGULL Team Winner
• ACL Fellow (2022)
• Outstanding Paper Award, EMNLP (2021)
• William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award, Michigan State University (2018)
• Withrow Distinguished Senior Scholar Award, College of Engineering, MSU (2017)
• Best Long Paper Award, ACL (2010)
• NSF Career Award (2004)

Joyce Y. Chai has been an influential figure in AI and NLP research, securing significant grants such as the NSF Career Award. She leads the Situated Language and Embodied Dialogue (SLED) research group and has served on the executive board of NAACL. Her teaching includes graduate courses on Natural Language Processing (EECS 595) and Advanced Artificial Intelligence (EECS 692).