We are the Language Interaction Lab at the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
We work at the intersection of Natural Language Processing and Human-Computer Interaction. We design human-centric AI systems that make it easier for more people to communicate, share and understand expert knowledge. This includes evaluating the ability of AI to communicate complex concepts to diverse audiences and building interactive tools that augment how people read, write, and listen in knowledge-intensive fields like medicine, law, and science.
News & Updates
- Jan 2026: We have 6 papers going to CHI 2026 this year! The papers represent the lab’s growing focus on human-centered AI in high-stakes domains like Law, Medicine, and Science. More details about each paper coming soon.
Our Team
Publications
FOXGLOVE: Understanding Goal-Oriented and Anchored Writing Feedback from Experts and LLMs on Argumentative Essays
EMNLP 2026
Explain Like I'm 5 or Whatever I Choose: Evaluating the Interactive Potential of Language Model Responses
ArXiv 2026 Preprint
From Crafting Text to Crafting Thought: Grounding Intelligent Writing Support to Writing Center Pedagogy
CHI 2026
Perspectra: Choosing Your Experts Enhances Critical Thinking in Multi-Agent Research Ideation
CHI 2026 Honorable Mention (top 5%)
Blog Posts
How team roles change as a project unfolds
October 30, 2026
The person who proposes an idea today may be the one questioning others’ ideas tomorrow or the one inviting a quiet teammate into the discussion next week. The shift of these team roles is easy to miss if we describe...
Who Is Personalization Actually For? Re-Centering Humans in LLM Personalization
June 15, 2026 · Lechen Zhang
A blog post about our paper, “Re-Centering Humans in LLM Personalization”
How do you have an AI help you write without writing for you?
April 10, 2026 · Yijun Liu
A common model for AI writing support is straightforward: paste your draft, receive a better one. We noticed this resembles a failure mode that universities dealt with decades ago, specifically in writing centers, places where students will go to receive...
Lab Life
