Research Interests
Can we use computational modeling to inform our understanding of semantics, pragmatics and social science ? I think the answer is yes
I am currently studying intergroup biases in communication with Jessy Li and David Beaver. I was inspired by a seminar in my first semester with David, where he talked about the Linguistic Intergroup Bias. To summarize my research questions succinctly — what are the linguistic properties that characterize and distinguish in-group speech from out-group speech, and how can we infer these properties using machine learning?
I completed my Masters at the University of Rochester, where I worked in the Formal and Computational Semantics Lab with Aaron Steven White. My research focused on the wide breadth of generalizations available across predicates and arguments in English.
Select Papers
You can view a list of all of my peer-reviewed papers on this page. The papers below are representative of my work and current research interests.
-
Venkata S Govindarajan, Juan Diego Rodriguez, Kaj Bostrom, and Kyle Mahowald (Dec. 2023). “Lil-Bevo: Explorations of Strategies for Training Language Models in More Humanlike Ways”. In Proceedings of the BabyLM Challenge at the 27th Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning. Singapore: Association for Computational Linguistics.
[pdf] [bib] [code] [models] -
Venkata S Govindarajan, David I. Beaver, Kyle Mahowald, Jessy Li (July 2023). “Counterfactual Probing for the Influence of Affect and Specificity on Intergroup Bias”. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). Toronto, Canada: Association for Computational Linguistics.
[pdf] [bib] [data+code] [poster] [slides] [talk] -
Venkata S Govindarajan, Katherine Atwell, Barea Sinno, Malihe Alikhani, David I. Beaver, Jessy Li (May 2023). “How people talk about each other: Modeling Generalized Intergroup Bias and Emotion”. In Proceedings of the 17th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL). Dubrovnik, Croatia: Association for Computational Linguistics.
[pdf] [bib] [data+code] [poster] [slides] [talk] -
Venkata S Govindarajan, Benjamin T. Chen, Rebecca Warholic, Katrin Erk & Junyi Jessy Li (November 2020). “Help! Need Advice on Identifying Advice”. In Proceedings of The 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. Online: Association for Computational Linguistics. November 2020.
[pdf] [bib] [data+code] [slides] [talk] -
Venkata Govindarajan, Benjamin Van Durme, & Aaron Steven White (2019). “Decomposing Generalization: Models of Generic, Habitual, and Episodic Statements”. In Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics 7. 501–517.
[pdf] [bib] [data+code] [slides]
Academic job search
I navigated the academic job market over Fall 2023 and Spring 2024. I’ve put up all my job materials, as well as the slides from my job talks on GitHub. I hope it helps you if you too decide to pursue a career in academia.