CSITM to host panel discussion titled ‘The Semantics of Meaning: Exploring NLP’s Capacity to Interpret Nuances Across Emotional, Cultural, and Economic Contexts on 6 May
Scholars from Microsoft Research India, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Wisconsin, and Dartmouth College to be featured as speakers
24 April, 2025, Bengaluru: The Centre for Software and IT Management (CSITM) at IIM Bangalore will host a panel discussion titled, ‘The Semantics of Meaning: Exploring NLP’s Capacity to Interpret Nuances Across Emotional, Cultural, and Economic Contexts’, on 6 May 2025. The session will spotlight recent interdisciplinary research, real-world use cases, and evolving best practices in NLP, making it relevant for academics, technologists, marketers, and policymakers alike.
To register, please visit: https://iim-b.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CzcLWrSQSfKcI-vc8LIwgA#/registration
“Language is more than words—it carries emotion, culture, and intent. Can AI truly grasp it all?” From misinterpretations in multilingual chatbots to gaps in cultural sensitivity and emotion recognition, the conversation around NLP and large language models is evolving. This session explores how language technologies perform across contexts where they excel, where they fall short, and why hybrid human-AI collaboration might be key to building truly inclusive and meaningful communication systems.
Speaker profiles:
Dr. Sunayana Sitaram - Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research India
Dr. Sunayana's research focuses on improving the evaluation and performance of large language models (LLMs) in languages beyond English, with a current emphasis on enabling participatory research for multilingual and multicultural evaluation and model development. From 2022 to 2024, Dr. Sitaram served as the Director of the MSR India Research Fellow Program, which hosts approximately 65 young researchers at the India lab, preparing them for careers in research, engineering, and entrepreneurship. She is a regular contributor to top-tier NLP conferences, including ACL, EMNLP, and CoLM, where she also serves on organizing committees. Her work has led to the development of several influential datasets and benchmarks that are widely used by research groups around the world.
Dr. Nupoor Ranade - Assistant Professor, Rhetoric and Technical Communication, Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Nupoor Ranade brings a humanistic and ethical lens to the discussion. Her teaching philosophy focuses on bridging the gap between academia and industry by helping students cultivate professional networks while actively contributing to their communities. Dr. Ranade has authored several peer-reviewed publications in leading journals such as Technical Communication, AI & Society, Communication Design Quarterly, and IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. Her research interests lie at the intersection of technical communication practice and pedagogy, professional writing and editing, inclusive design, and the ethics of artificial intelligence.
Dr. Ishita Chakraborty - Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Wisconsin–Madison Thomas and Charlene Landsberg Smith Faculty Fellow.
Dr. Ishita Chakraborty’s research interests span artificial intelligence (AI), large language models, unstructured data, and online platforms. Her work has been published in leading journals such as the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing, and Review of Marketing Research. Her doctoral dissertation papers have earned recognition as finalists for prestigious awards from the American Marketing Association (AMA), including the Don Lehmann Award, the AMA AI SIG Best AI Paper Award, and the John A. Howard Award. Dr. Chakraborty holds a PhD in Quantitative Marketing from the Yale School of Management and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Before pursuing her doctoral studies at Yale, she gained professional experience in marketing, sales, and consulting at Accenture Management Consulting and Mondelez International.
Dr. Nikhil Singh - Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Dartmouth College
Dr. Nikhil Singh works at the intersection of machine learning and human behaviour, with applications in creativity (e.g., composition, ideation, writing, generative models), perception (e.g., multimodality, representation learning), and behavior (e.g., agents, decision-making). These areas converge toward his central goal of designing AI systems that meaningfully augment human capabilities. Dr. Singh’s work has been published in top-tier venues such as CVPR, ICML, ICLR, and Nature Communications, and has been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times. He received his PhD in 2024 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he explored the intersection of computational and human-centered approaches to AI. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Singh is also an accomplished musician and composer. He earned his BM from the Berklee College of Music in 2017, where he studied classical composition, jazz, and computer music, and later served as an instructor. At Dartmouth, he is affiliated with the Digital Arts program and continues to explore the interplay between music, sound, and AI in his research
CSITM to host panel discussion titled ‘The Semantics of Meaning: Exploring NLP’s Capacity to Interpret Nuances Across Emotional, Cultural, and Economic Contexts on 6 May
Scholars from Microsoft Research India, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Wisconsin, and Dartmouth College to be featured as speakers
24 April, 2025, Bengaluru: The Centre for Software and IT Management (CSITM) at IIM Bangalore will host a panel discussion titled, ‘The Semantics of Meaning: Exploring NLP’s Capacity to Interpret Nuances Across Emotional, Cultural, and Economic Contexts’, on 6 May 2025. The session will spotlight recent interdisciplinary research, real-world use cases, and evolving best practices in NLP, making it relevant for academics, technologists, marketers, and policymakers alike.
To register, please visit: https://iim-b.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CzcLWrSQSfKcI-vc8LIwgA#/registration
“Language is more than words—it carries emotion, culture, and intent. Can AI truly grasp it all?” From misinterpretations in multilingual chatbots to gaps in cultural sensitivity and emotion recognition, the conversation around NLP and large language models is evolving. This session explores how language technologies perform across contexts where they excel, where they fall short, and why hybrid human-AI collaboration might be key to building truly inclusive and meaningful communication systems.
Speaker profiles:
Dr. Sunayana Sitaram - Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research India
Dr. Sunayana's research focuses on improving the evaluation and performance of large language models (LLMs) in languages beyond English, with a current emphasis on enabling participatory research for multilingual and multicultural evaluation and model development. From 2022 to 2024, Dr. Sitaram served as the Director of the MSR India Research Fellow Program, which hosts approximately 65 young researchers at the India lab, preparing them for careers in research, engineering, and entrepreneurship. She is a regular contributor to top-tier NLP conferences, including ACL, EMNLP, and CoLM, where she also serves on organizing committees. Her work has led to the development of several influential datasets and benchmarks that are widely used by research groups around the world.
Dr. Nupoor Ranade - Assistant Professor, Rhetoric and Technical Communication, Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Nupoor Ranade brings a humanistic and ethical lens to the discussion. Her teaching philosophy focuses on bridging the gap between academia and industry by helping students cultivate professional networks while actively contributing to their communities. Dr. Ranade has authored several peer-reviewed publications in leading journals such as Technical Communication, AI & Society, Communication Design Quarterly, and IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. Her research interests lie at the intersection of technical communication practice and pedagogy, professional writing and editing, inclusive design, and the ethics of artificial intelligence.
Dr. Ishita Chakraborty - Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Wisconsin–Madison Thomas and Charlene Landsberg Smith Faculty Fellow.
Dr. Ishita Chakraborty’s research interests span artificial intelligence (AI), large language models, unstructured data, and online platforms. Her work has been published in leading journals such as the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing, and Review of Marketing Research. Her doctoral dissertation papers have earned recognition as finalists for prestigious awards from the American Marketing Association (AMA), including the Don Lehmann Award, the AMA AI SIG Best AI Paper Award, and the John A. Howard Award. Dr. Chakraborty holds a PhD in Quantitative Marketing from the Yale School of Management and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Before pursuing her doctoral studies at Yale, she gained professional experience in marketing, sales, and consulting at Accenture Management Consulting and Mondelez International.
Dr. Nikhil Singh - Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Dartmouth College
Dr. Nikhil Singh works at the intersection of machine learning and human behaviour, with applications in creativity (e.g., composition, ideation, writing, generative models), perception (e.g., multimodality, representation learning), and behavior (e.g., agents, decision-making). These areas converge toward his central goal of designing AI systems that meaningfully augment human capabilities. Dr. Singh’s work has been published in top-tier venues such as CVPR, ICML, ICLR, and Nature Communications, and has been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times. He received his PhD in 2024 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he explored the intersection of computational and human-centered approaches to AI. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Singh is also an accomplished musician and composer. He earned his BM from the Berklee College of Music in 2017, where he studied classical composition, jazz, and computer music, and later served as an instructor. At Dartmouth, he is affiliated with the Digital Arts program and continues to explore the interplay between music, sound, and AI in his research