Topic in Natural Language Processing

Multimodal & grounded language

65 labs at 23 universities work on multimodal & grounded language (part of Natural Language Processing). Most at SJTU, CMU and Tsinghua. 50 published in 2026.

Where they areClick a university to narrow the list

I want to research multimodal & grounded language in anywhere.

65 labs at 23 universities work on multimodal & grounded language. Most at 9, 6, 6. 50 of them published in 2026, mostly at CVPR, ACL and ICLR. Earliest deadline: , Dec 1.

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65 labs

USStanfordComputer ScienceDec 8

Jiajun WuAssistant Professor of Computer Science

Studies physical scene understanding and multimodal perception for embodied agents and robots.

Embodied & active vision
Recognition, detection & segmentation
Multimodal & grounded language

2026AnyLift: Scaling Motion Reconstruction from Internet Videos via 2D DiffusionCVPR
2026ART: Articulated Reconstruction TransformerCVPR

144 T1 · 173 papers · 9 members · 24 alumni

CNPekingSchool of Computer ScienceJan 15

Shanghang ZhangAssistant Professor

Researches machine learning and computer vision, including brain-inspired learning and embodied multimodal models.

Vision-language & multimodal
Embodied & active vision
Multimodal & grounded language

2026Action-Sketcher: From Reasoning to Action via Visual Sketches for Robotic ManipulationCVPR
2026BranchGRPO: Stable and Efficient GRPO with Structured Branching in Diffusion ModelsICLR

110 T1 · 151 papers · Group size not listed

USUC BerkeleyElectrical Engineering and Computer SciencesDec 1

Trevor DarrellProfessor in Residence

Develops visual recognition algorithms and multimodal vision-language models.

Vision-language & multimodal
Recognition, detection & segmentation
Multimodal & grounded language

2026Attend Before Attention: Efficient and Scalable Video Understanding via Autoregressive GazingCVPR
2026Chain-of-Visual-Thought: Teaching VLMs to See and Think Better with Continuous Visual TokensECCV

92 T1 · 114 papers · 11 members · 13 alumni

USUSCElectrical and Computer EngineeringDec 15

Shrikanth NarayananNiki and Max Nikias Chair in Engineering and University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Pediatrics, and Otolaryngology

Leads SAIL on speech and multimodal signal processing, behavioral signal analysis and human-centered machine intelligence.

Speech recognition & spoken language
Speech enhancement & signal processing
Multimodal & grounded language

2026A Long-Form Single-Speaker Real-Time MRI Speech Dataset and BenchmarkICASSP
2026A Point Process Model of Skin Conductance Responses in a Stroop Task for Predicting Depression and Suicidal IdeationICASSP

71 T1 · 162 papers · 24 members · 88 alumni

CNTsinghuaInstitute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS)Feb 28

Hang ZhaoAssistant Professor

Works on computer vision, multimodal machine learning, autonomous driving, and robotics.

Embodied & active vision
Vision-language & multimodal
Multimodal & grounded language

2026ActionCodec: What Makes for Good Action TokenizersCoRL
2026Coarse-to-Control: Action-Token Planning for Vision-Language-Action ModelsCoRL

65 T1 · 76 papers · 16 members · 4 alumni

CNTsinghuaDepartment of AutomationFeb 28

Jianhua TaoProfessor

Works on speech processing, affective computing, and multimodal information fusion.

Speech recognition & spoken language
Affective & health speech
Multimodal & grounded language

2026AStar: Boosting Multimodal Reasoning with Automated Structured ThinkingAAAI
2026Beyond Examples: Towards Automated Thought-level In-Context Reasoning for Large Language ModelsACL

59 T1 · 151 papers · Group size not listed

CNZhejiangSchool of Artificial IntelligenceFeb 28

Siliang Tang教授

Works on natural language processing, multimodal large models, embodied intelligence and graph neural networks.

Multimodal & grounded language
Large language models
Vision-language & multimodal

2026Arcadia: Toward a Full-Lifecycle Framework for Embodied Lifelong LearningCVPR
2026Evolving Generalist Virtual Agents with Generative and Associative MemoryAAAI

59 T1 · 103 papers · Group size not listed

CNZhejiangSchool of Software TechnologyFeb 28

Tao Jin教师

Works on multimodal machine learning and speech synthesis.

Multimodal & grounded language
Speech synthesis & voice
Vision-language & multimodal

2026AlignSep: Temporally-Aligned Video-Queried Sound Separation with Flow MatchingICLR
2026Decoupling Stability and Plasticity for Multi-Modal Test-Time AdaptationCVPR

53 T1 · 77 papers · Group size not listed

USUWPaul G. Allen School of Computer Science & EngineeringDec 15

Ali FarhadiProfessor

Works on computer vision and open multimodal foundation models connecting vision, language and reasoning.

Vision-language & multimodal
Multimodal & grounded language
Generative & foundation models

2025AHA: A Vision-Language-Model for Detecting and Reasoning Over Failures in Robotic ManipulationICLR
2025Coarse Correspondences Boost Spatial-Temporal Reasoning in Multimodal Language ModelCVPR

49 T1 · 54 papers · 21 members · 34 alumni

USUWPaul G. Allen School of Computer Science & EngineeringDec 15

Ranjay KrishnaAssistant Professor

Works at the intersection of computer vision and human-computer interaction, including multimodal models and visual reasoning.

Vision-language & multimodal
Multimodal & grounded language
Reasoning & agents

2025AHA: A Vision-Language-Model for Detecting and Reasoning Over Failures in Robotic ManipulationICLR
2025Coarse Correspondences Boost Spatial-Temporal Reasoning in Multimodal Language ModelCVPR

49 T1 · 54 papers · 21 members · 34 alumni

USGeorgia TechSchool of Interactive ComputingDec 15

Humphrey ShiAssociate Professor

Works on computer vision and generative models, including image editing and efficient multimodal AI systems.

Image & video generation
Vision-language & multimodal
Multimodal & grounded language

2026DuoGen: Towards Autonomous Interleaved Multimodal GenerationCVPR
2026MapReduce LoRA: Advancing the Pareto Front in Multi-Preference Optimization for Generative ModelsCVPR

48 T1 · 77 papers · 14 members

USMichiganComputer Science and EngineeringDec 15

Honglak LeeProfessor, EECS – Computer Science and Engineering

Studies deep learning and representation learning, with applications to computer vision, multimodal models and reinforcement learning.

Reinforcement learning
Generative & foundation models
Multimodal & grounded language

2026AnthroTAP: Learning Point Tracking with Real-World MotionCVPR
2026Enhancing Mixture-of-Experts Specialization via Cluster-Aware UpcyclingCVPR

47 T1 · 67 papers · 7 members · 41 alumni

USUT AustinComputer ScienceDec 15

Kristen GraumanProfessor, Professorship in Computer Sciences #4

Leads the UT Computer Vision Group, working on visual recognition, video analysis, first-person (egocentric) vision and embodied multimodal perception.

Recognition, detection & segmentation
Video understanding
Multimodal & grounded language

2026Audio-Visual Camera Pose Estimation with Passive Scene Sounds and In-the-Wild VideoECCV
2026Don't Let the Video Speak: Audio-Contrastive Preference Optimization for Audio-visual Language ModelsECCV

45 T1 · 51 papers · 7 members · 22 alumni

SGNUSDepartment of Electrical and Computer EngineeringDec 15

Robby TanAssociate Professor

Leads the Vision and AI Lab on computer vision in adverse outdoor conditions, human-centric analysis, fake image detection and agentic multimodal foundation…

Recognition, detection & segmentation
Vision-language & multimodal
Multimodal & grounded language

2026Actor as Its Own Critic: Unifying Region Understanding and Localization via CycleGRPOECCV
2026Aggregating Diverse Cue Experts for AI-Generated Image DetectionAAAI

39 T1 · 46 papers · 9 members · 44 alumni

USUIUCElectrical and Computer EngineeringDec 1

Alexander SchwingAssociate Professor

Studies computer vision and machine learning, including generative models, structured prediction and multimodal learning.

Vision-language & multimodal
Multimodal & grounded language
Generative & foundation models

2026FlowMoP: Stochastic Multi-Person PredictionNeurIPS
2026Latent Wasserstein Adversarial Imitation LearningICLR

38 T1 · 38 papers · 12 members · 13 alumni

USCMULanguage Technologies InstituteDec 9

Daniel FriedAssistant Professor

Studies language models for code generation and grounded language understanding and generation.

Large language models
Multimodal & grounded language

2026From Reproduction to Replication: Evaluating Research Agents with Progressive Code MaskingICLR
2026Generative Value Conflicts Reveal LLM PrioritiesICLR

38 T1 · 56 papers · 5 members · 1 alumnus

SGNTUCollege of Computing and Data Science

Jaehong YoonAssistant Professor

Works on machine learning and deep learning across vision and language, including efficient and continual learning of multimodal models.

Vision-language & multimodal
Multimodal & grounded language
Efficient training & inference

2026C34 DreamRunner: Fine-Grained Compositional Story-to-Video Generation with Retrieval-Augmented Motion AdaptationAAAI
2026C36 TrustGen: A Platform of Dynamic Benchmarking on the Trustworthiness of Generative Foundation ModelsICLR

37 T1 · 45 papers · 8 members

SGNTUSchool of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Jianfei YangAssistant Professor

Works on multimodal, physical and embodied AI, including wireless and multimodal sensing with large models.

Robot perception & SLAM
Multimodal & grounded language
Vision-language & multimodal

2026Gaussian Adaptive Patching Powered Fully-Connected Spatial-Temporal Graph for Multivariate Time-Series DataTPAMI
2026M4Human: A Large-Scale Multimodal mmWave Radar Benchmark for Human Mesh ReconstructionCVPR

36 T1 · 73 papers · Group size not listed

USMichiganComputer Science and EngineeringDec 15

Joyce ChaiProfessor, EECS – Computer Science and Engineering

Studies natural language processing grounded in vision and robotics, including situated human-machine communication and interactive task learning.

Multimodal & grounded language
Signal processing & information theory

2026Fast Spatial Memory with Elastic Test-Time TrainingECCV
2026RoboMME: Benchmarking and Understanding Memory for Robotic Generalist PoliciesICML

34 T1 · 49 papers · 7 members · 88 alumni

USGeorgia TechSchool of Interactive ComputingDec 15

Jesse ThomasonAssociate Professor

Leads the GLAMOR Lab on grounding language in perception and robot actions.

Multimodal & grounded language
Robot perception & SLAM

2026Auditing Multi-Agent LLM Reasoning Trees Outperforms Majority Vote and LLM-as-JudgeEMNLP
2026Believing without Seeing: Quality Scores for Contextualizing Vision-Language Model ExplanationsACL

32 T1 · 62 papers · Group size not listed

Where they areClick a university to narrow the list

Where they areClick a university to narrow the list

Other topics in Natural Language Processing

I want to research multimodal & grounded language in anywhere.

Jiajun WuAssistant Professor of Computer Science

Shanghang ZhangAssistant Professor

Trevor DarrellProfessor in Residence

Shrikanth NarayananNiki and Max Nikias Chair in Engineering and University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Pediatrics, and Otolaryngology

Hang ZhaoAssistant Professor

Jianhua TaoProfessor

Siliang Tang教授

Tao Jin教师

Ali FarhadiProfessor

Ranjay KrishnaAssistant Professor

Humphrey ShiAssociate Professor

Honglak LeeProfessor, EECS – Computer Science and Engineering

Kristen GraumanProfessor, Professorship in Computer Sciences #4

Robby TanAssociate Professor

Alexander SchwingAssociate Professor

Daniel FriedAssistant Professor

Jaehong YoonAssistant Professor

Jianfei YangAssistant Professor

Joyce ChaiProfessor, EECS – Computer Science and Engineering

Jesse ThomasonAssociate Professor

Where they areClick a university to narrow the list

Other topics in Natural Language Processing

I want to research multimodal & grounded language in anywhere.

Jiajun WuAssistant Professor of Computer Science

Shanghang ZhangAssistant Professor

Trevor DarrellProfessor in Residence

Shrikanth NarayananNiki and Max Nikias Chair in Engineering and University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Pediatrics, and Otolaryngology

Hang ZhaoAssistant Professor

Jianhua TaoProfessor

Siliang Tang教授

Tao Jin教师

Ali FarhadiProfessor

Ranjay KrishnaAssistant Professor

Humphrey ShiAssociate Professor

Honglak LeeProfessor, EECS – Computer Science and Engineering

Kristen GraumanProfessor, Professorship in Computer Sciences #4

Robby TanAssociate Professor

Alexander SchwingAssociate Professor

Daniel FriedAssistant Professor

Jaehong YoonAssistant Professor

Jianfei YangAssistant Professor

Joyce ChaiProfessor, EECS – Computer Science and Engineering

Jesse ThomasonAssociate Professor