At CALM, we investigate whether and how AI truly understands what people mean, including implicit and ambiguous language; study language learners and individuals living with disorders and illness, including how language is learned, lost, and re-learned.
Along the way, we work with real and synthetic language data, design and run experiments, build AI tools, visualize and interpret results, and communicate science to a broad audience.
Undergraduates can combine languages, AI, coding, psychology, and healthcare in one project; graduates can build focused research on linguistics with broader social implications. Check out my recent talks to get a better sense of the work we do at CALM.
At Purdue
- Cong, Y. (2026). Computation and Linguistic Meaning: Evaluating, Improving, and Applying Language Models in Language Studies. The Purdue Linguistics Symposium (PLS). April 24-25.
- Cong, Y. (2024). Language Understanding in Humans and AI. Symposium: Current Ideas in Artificial Intelligence. The 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy & Psychology. June 19-22.
Elsewhere
- Cong, Y. (2026). From Measurement to the Classroom: AI Tools for Language Learning Research and Practice. The Webinar AI in the Chinese Higher Ed Classroom, jointly organized by the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA), April 21.
- Cong, Y., LaCroix, A.N., Lee, J. (2025). Enhancing Stroke-Induced Aphasia Assessment Using Interpretable Linguistic Biomarkers and LLMs. Voice AI Symposium in the Bridge2AI-Voice Consortium. University of South Florida. April 22-24.