Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源)

Applied Scientist @Amazon Alexa AI, PhD @IllinoisCS. I like NLP, conversational AI, cats, and video games.

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

My dad @narayan140 got my cats used to wearing harnesses and enjoying some fresh air on the balcony on Sunday afternoons, so that’s why I’m now sitting on the balcony at 1:30am on Tuesday enduring 40 degrees in my pajamas. Pic related, it’s the cat. Send help.

[Prashant Jayannavar @p_jayannavar]

In San Diego for ACL 2026! I'll be giving a talk on our paper, "BAP v2: An Enhanced Task Framework for Instruction Following in Minecraft Dialogues" (accepted to the Computational Linguistics journal). If interested in instruction following and spatial reasoning in embodied dialogue, this might be up your alley.

We use Minecraft to study an under-explored combination of real-world challenges for embodied agents, and what it takes to make progress (beyond just LLMs) — including synthetic data and evaluation. We also introduce BAP v2, a fertile testbed for future research.

Would love to connect — on research or otherwise! DM or email me.

Joint work with @liliang_ren, @marisahudspeth, Risham Sidhu, Charlotte Lambert, Ariel Cordes, Elizabeth Kaplan, @anjalisaa, and Julia Hockenmaier. @uiuc_nlp

📄 Paper: https://t.co/IjqLqvAO4c
📍 Oral Session B: Resources and Evaluation 2 — Sun, Jul 5, 2026, 2 PM

#ACL2026 #NLProc #EmbodiedAI #Minecraft #LLMs

[Prashant Jayannavar @p_jayannavar]

🎮🤖 Can games teach AI to understand the physical world? Excited to announce a special session at the 2026 IEEE Conference on Games (@ieee_cog): Evaluating and Advancing Spatial Intelligence through Games. Submit your research and join us in Madrid this September! 🇪🇸
🧵👇 (1/5)

[Prashant Jayannavar @p_jayannavar]

Thrilled to share that our work has been accepted as a long paper in the Computational Linguistics journal! 🎉

If you're into instruction following in embodied AI and games, spatial intelligence, synthetic data, or robust evaluation, there’s a good chance it’ll interest you. Pre–MIT Press publication version here: https://t.co/WDI0E3przT. Links to short summaries in comments.

A huge thank you to my advisor and co-authors: @liliang_ren, @marisahudspeth, Risham Sidhu, Charlotte Lambert, Ariel Cordes, Elizabeth Kaplan, @anjalisaa, and Prof. Julia Hockenmaier. 🙏 @uiuc_nlp @siebelschool

#EmbodiedAI #Minecraft #LLMs #NLProc

[Prashant Jayannavar @p_jayannavar]

🚨 New preprint out! 🚨 In "BAP v2: An Enhanced Task Framework for Instruction Following in Minecraft Dialogues", we work towards a core AI challenge: how can agents follow complex, conversational instructions in a dynamic 3D world? To this end, we introduce an enhanced task framework to push research in grounded instruction following in such embodied settings.

#EmbodiedAI #Minecraft #SyntheticData #LLMs #NLProc

🧵👇 (1/10)

[FINAL FANTASY VII EVER CRISIS_EN｜FF7EC @FFVII_EC_EN]

FINAL FANTASY VII EVER CRISIS X #HYTE

#FF7EC celebrates 6-months since launch & the @SquareEnix Steam Sale with a giveaway! Follow @FFVII_EC_EN & repost for a chance to win an exclusive FF7EC @hytebrand Case! Entry until April 1 PDT. Official Rules: https://t.co/ljGoj2hjwM

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

#XboxFFXIVSweepstakes

[XBOX @XBOX]

This is one epic Xbox

Follow @Xbox & @FF_XIV_EN & RT with #XboxFFXIVSweepstakes for a chance to win a custom FINAL FANTASY XIV console bundle, Complete Collector's Edition game & 12-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Membership

Ages 18+. Ends 3/28/24. Rules: https://t.co/yc032cRgRF

[XBOX Game Pass @XBOXGamePass]

the pizza party never stops with these guys🍕

follow @XboxGamePass & RT this post with #XboxTMNTMoviesweepstakes for a chance to win these TMNT-inspired controllers!

be sure to see @TMNTMovie in theatres 8/2/23 in the US!

ages 18+. ends 08/13/23. rules: https://t.co/C2Pjfi7yru

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

Still lying awake at 1am wondering if I’ve been gaslit about how many legs there are on the left rear side of a cat

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

@yoavartzi @aclmeeting The poster sessions were great! But definitely needed more walking room/better ventilation 😷

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

#IfritOnTour @finalfantasyxvi

[Yufei Tian @yufei_t]

#ACL2023NLP How to generate lyrics 🎤 that go with a given melody with topic control using LMs? We propose an *unsupervised* approach that compiles melody into decoding constraints only at inference time! 🎶

Check out our demo with lyrics and audios at https://t.co/JYIjKcF9PT 😍

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

@mayhewsw @OpenAI I can’t make this up

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

Check out our group’s work at #EMNLP22 that Jiao (our awesome intern) will be presenting in person!

[Jiao Sun @sunjiao123sun_]

Are you excited about pun generation? In #EMNLP2022, we have two works accepted in the main conference:

1️⃣ Context-Situated Pun Generation 👉 a brand-new task!
2️⃣ ExPUNations: Augmenting Puns with Keywords and Explanations 👉 a new dataset!

Learn more! 🧵👇

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

@mayhewsw This is…intriguing

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

Thanks @museband for spending 2,666 minutes with me in 2022. I couldn’t stop listening to Won’t Stand Down. #SpotifyWrapped https://t.co/0MTtkK9UBu

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

@rabblerouses How about “Jones”

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

@rabblerouses I like you *waggles eyebrows*

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

@rabblerouses Did you change your name

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

@rabblerouses Are you sure it’s not this guy who you blocked instead https://t.co/g6pr8wGS0h

[Anjali Narayan-Chen (dr. அஞ்சலி நாராயண் 陈渊源) @anjalisaa]

@VioletNPeng @UCLAengineering @yufei_t Can confirm, @yufei_t is super awesome 😄