https://blast-cu.github.io/

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64    <h3>About Us</h3>
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67	  <p>Welcome to the webpage of the Boulder Language and Social Technologies research group (BLAST), led by <a href="https://blast-cu.github.io/mlpacheco/">Prof. Maria L. Pacheco</a>.</p>
68
69<p>We are based in the <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/cs/">Department of Computer
70Science at the University of Colorado Boulder</a>.</p>
71
72<p>At BLAST we work on Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and
73Computational Social Science. We are broadly interested in finding transparent and replicable insights to societally relevant problems through the computational analysis of language. In general, we are curious about:</p>
74<ul>
75  <li>What <strong>language use</strong> can tell us about <strong>culture</strong> and <strong>society</strong></li>
76  <li>The study of <strong>socio-technical systems</strong>, from information ecosystems to team collaboration</li>
77  <li><strong>Theoretically-motivated approaches</strong> for analyzing <strong>content at scale</strong> in traditional and emerging media</li>
78  <li><strong>Human-centered</strong> aspects of <strong>language technology</strong>, and how it can be used to complement rather than replace human processess</li>
79  <li>Developing <strong>computational methods</strong> and <strong>tools</strong> that facilitate all of the above</li>
80</ul>
81
82<p>For more information, see our full list of <a href="https://blast-cu.github.io/publications/">publications</a>.</p>
83
84<p><span style="color:red">We are <strong>not</strong> recruiting new PhD students for Fall 2027.</span></p>
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90<h4>News</h4>
91
92
93<p>Sep 2026<br><p>Congrats to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/graysonth/">Grayson</a>! His work on <strong>lay-language and cross-lingual disparities in LLMs for medical uses</strong> was accepted to <strong><a href="https://2026.aaclnet.org/">AACL 2026</a></strong>. Pre-print coming soon!</p>
94</p>
95
96<p>Aug 2026<br><p>Congrats to <a href="https://bagyasree.com/">Bagyasree</a> and <a href="https://aleto1999.github.io/">Alex</a>! Their work <strong><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.17020">measuring interdisciplinary discourse in scholarly publications</a></strong> was accepted to the <strong>Findings of <a href="https://2026.emnlp.org/">EMNLP 2026</a></strong></p>
97</p>
98
99<p>May 2026<br><p>Congrats to <a href="https://blast-cu.github.io/team/#phd-students">Matt</a>! His preliminary work on <strong><a href="https://aclanthology.org/2026.codi-1.11/">grounded dialog simulation</a></strong> (co-first authored with <a href="https://michaelginn.com/">Michael Ginn</a>) was accepted to the <strong><a href="https://sites.google.com/view/codi-crac2026/home">CODI-CRAC workshop</a></strong>, co-located with <strong>ACL 2026</strong></p>
100</p>
101
102<p>April 2026<br><p>Congrats to <a href="https://aleto1999.github.io/">Alex</a>! Her preliminary work on <strong><a href="https://aclanthology.org/2026.nlpcss-1.11/">conceptual metaphor discovery</a></strong> was accepted to the <strong><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/nlpandcss/home?authuser=0">NLP+CSS workshop</a></strong>, co-located with <strong>ACL 2026</strong></p>
103</p>
104
105<p>April 2026<br><p>BLAST at <strong><a href="https://2026.aclweb.org/">ACL 2026</a></strong>: Congrats to <a href="https://www.rohandas.net/">Rohan</a> (and team: Advait, Alex, Zohar), <a href="https://alvin-pc-chen.github.io/">Alvin</a> (and team: Rohan, Dananjay, Alexandria, Maksim), <a href="https://obedjunias.com/">Obed</a>, and <a href="https://prajaktakini.github.io/">Prajakta</a> (in collaboration with <a href="https://shirawein.github.io/">Shira Wein</a>’s team at Amherst College) for their papers accepted to ACL 2026. We have work spanning <strong><a href="https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1970/">narrative induction</a></strong>, <strong><a href="https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1968/">interactive knowledge discovery</a></strong>, <strong><a href="https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-short.61/">logical common sense reasoning</a></strong> and <strong><a href="https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.781/">mechanistic interpretability for language artifacts</a></strong>. Looking forward to a great conference!</p>
106</p>
107
108<p>March 2026<br><p>Congrats to <a href="https://blast-cu.github.io/team/#phd-students">Chloe</a>! Her work <strong><a href="https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/42782">building a longitudinal dataset of YouTube channels</a></strong> was accepted to <strong><a href="https://www.icwsm.org/2026/index.html">ICWSM 2026</a></strong></p>
109</p>
110
111<p>Feb 2026<br><p>Congrats to <a href="https://blast-cu.github.io/team/#phd-students">Mary</a>! Her work on <strong><a href="https://lrec.elra.info/lrec2026-main-745">de-identified referring expressions</a></strong> was accepted to <strong><a href="https://www.elra.info/lrec2026/">LREC 2026</a></strong></p>
112</p>
113
114<p>

114Jan 2026<br><p>Congrats to <a href="https://blast-cu.github.io/team/#phd-students">Matt</a>! His work on <strong><a href="https://aclanthology.org/2026.eacl-long.160/">prompt-based structured prediction</a></strong> was accepted to <strong><a href="https://2026.eacl.org/">EACL 2026</a></strong></p>
115</p>
116
117<p>Sep 2025<br><p>BLAST at <strong><a href="https://starsem2025.github.io/">*SEM 2025</a></strong>: Congrats to <a href="https://advaitdeshmukh.github.io/">Advait</a>, <a href="https://ashwinumadi.github.io/">Ashwin</a> and <a href="https://blast-cu.github.io/team/#phd-students">Dananjay</a>! Their work on <strong><a href="https://aclanthology.org/2025.starsem-1.15/">long tail entity typing</a></strong> was accepted to *SEM. Also, congrats to <a href="https://bagyasree.com/">Bagyasree</a>! Her work on <strong><a href="https://aclanthology.org/2025.starsem-1.30/">cross-domain persuasion detection</a></strong> was also accepted to *SEM</p>
118</p>
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