Chirpy Cardinal

This team's goal is to advance the state of open-domain dialogue by blending modern NLP techniques with empathetic, engaging responses.

Stanford's Team Chirpy Cardinal is returning to the competition for the third time.

Our goal is to advance the state of open-domain dialogue by blending modern NLP techniques with empathetic, engaging responses. With each of us bringing a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences to the table, we hope for our bot to be able to provide a great experience for customers, one that makes them feel understood and cared for. We are advised by Prof. Christopher D. Manning.

Chirpy Cardinal (2022)
Team Chirpy Cardinal (2022)

Ryan A. Chi - Team Leader

Chi is a master's student at Stanford working on understanding large language models. Previously, he was the lead contributor for Stanford CRFM's bias investigation team, and was at NVIDIA AI working on NMT systems. This year, he's leading Stanford's Chirpy Cardinal Alexa Prize team. In addition, he has served as the president of Stanford ACM and a coach for the USA Linguistics Olympiad team.

Virginia Adams

Adams is a first year computer science master student, concentrating in AI. She has a background in NLP and worked as an applied research scientist on the conversational AI team at NVIDIA for two years before starting her masters at Stanford.

Thanawan Atchariyachanvanit

Atchariyachanvanit is a sophomore at Stanford University studying computer science. She is an international student from Thailand. Previously, she was an undergraduate research assistant at Stanford NLP Group during the summer.

Steven Cao

Cao is a second-year PhD student at Stanford, researching natural language processing, machine learning, and theory. In the past, he has worked on syntactic parsing, grammar induction, and multilingual modeling. Cao is currently supported by the NSF GRFP.

Gordon Chi

Chi is a master's student at Stanford in building virtual assistants and leveraging large language models. He is a current mentor of the Stanford Undergraduate Research in CS program, and was a former President of Stanford ACM and International Linguistics Olympiad Contestant. He is passionate about applying game-playing learning approaches in real world domains in NLP and healthcare.

Nathan A. Chi

Chi is a sophomore at Stanford, studying computer science. He is interested in AI and its applications to healthcare. In addition to the Stanford AI Lab, he is a section leader for Stanford’s introductory CS course and serves as the current president of Stanford ACM. He researches chatbots and biomedical AI at Stanford, Yale and Harvard.

Gary Dai

Dai is an Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering masters student concentrating in ML, robotics, and control. He worked at Meta for internship on Recommendation system and Language model knowledge distillations.

Scott Hickmann

Scott is a sophomore studying Computer Science at Stanford University. He is a full-stack developer who worked on computer vision and NLP projects in industry. Scott is also teaching a web development class for Stanford ACM. He is looking forward to delving deeper into scalable NLP solutions to improve real-world customer-facing interactions.

Jeremy Kim - Co-Team Leader

Kim is a junior at Stanford University studying mathematics, originally from New York City. Kim loves brainstorming solutions to problems with other people, and is eager to pursue his passions through the Alexa Prize contest.

Siyan Li

Li is a second-year master's student in computer science at Stanford University. Her current research focus is on dialogue systems, both in speech and text. She has been an intern at Amazon Robotics, and conducted research at Carnegie Mellon, University of Southern California, and IT University of Copenhagen. Li will be applying to PhD programs this year, and she is passionate about applying dialogue systems in healthcare contexts, specifically in a mental health related context.

Kristie Park

Park is a junior at Stanford double majoring in Biomechanical Engineering and Sociology with a minor in Music. She is interested in the intersection between graphic design and empathetic communication.

Shashank Rammoorthy

Rammoorthy is a masters student in Computer Science, interested in systems and ML, and is especially curious about what makes systems scale well. Previously, he did self supervised learning research at the Stanford CoCo Lab.

Parth Sarthi

Sarthi is a sophomore at Stanford studying Computer Science. He has an interest in Retrieval Augmented Generation and reducing hallucinations in Large Language Models. Additionally, Sarthi is a part of the Contextual AI research team.

Ji Hun Wang

Wang is a junior at Stanford, majoring in Computer Science and Linguistics. His research explores the explainability of Large Language Models, multimodal deep learning, and the use of deep learning to study formal aspects of natural languages. He is currently a member of the Stanford ML Group.

Brian Y. Xu

Xu is an undergraduate studying mathematics and statistics who is interested in analyzing human behavior and answering social questions through the lens of robust mathematical modeling. He previously interned with the CS Theory Group.

Brian Z. Xu

Xu is a sophomore at Stanford studying Mathematical and Computational Science. He is also a research engineer with the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. Xu is interested in exploring creative uses of natural language processing for problem-solving.

Katherine Yu

Yu is a junior at Stanford University studying computer science and mathematics. She has done research with the Stanford Theory Group on sampling algorithms, and is interested in computer systems and user- facing software.

Christopher Manning - Faculty advisor

Manning is the inaugural Thomas M. Siebel Professor in Machine Learning in the Departments of Linguistics and Computer Science at Stanford University, Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), and an Associate Director of the Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Institute (HAI). His research goal is computers that can intelligently process, understand, and generate human language material. Manning is a leader in applying Deep Learning to Natural Language Processing, with well-known research on the GloVe model of word vectors, question answering, tree-recursive neural networks, machine reasoning, neural network dependency parsing, neural machine translation, sentiment analysis, and deep language understanding.

Latest news

The latest updates, stories, and more about Alexa Prize.
US, WA, Seattle
About Sponsored Products and Brands The Sponsored Products and Brands (SPB) team at Amazon Ads is re-imagining the advertising landscape through state-of-art generative AI technologies, revolutionizing how millions of customers discover products and engage with brands across Amazon.com and beyond. We are at the forefront of re-inventing advertising experiences, bridging human creativity with artificial intelligence to transform every aspect of the advertising lifecycle from ad creation and optimization to performance analysis and customer insights. We are a passionate group of innovators dedicated to developing responsible and intelligent AI technologies that balance the needs of advertisers, enhance the shopping experience, and strengthen the marketplace. If you're energized by solving complex challenges and pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI, join us in shaping the future of advertising. Key job responsibilities This role will be pivotal in redesigning how ads contribute to a personalized, relevant, and inspirational shopping experience, with the customer value proposition at the forefront. Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to: * Contribute to the design and development of GenAI, deep learning, multi-objective optimization and/or reinforcement learning empowered solutions to transform ad retrieval, auctions, whole-page relevance, and/or bespoke shopping experiences. * Collaborate cross-functionally with other scientists, engineers, and product managers to bring scalable, production-ready science solutions to life. * Stay abreast of industry trends in GenAI, LLMs, and related disciplines, bringing fresh and innovative concepts, ideas, and prototypes to the organization. * Contribute to the enhancement of team’s scientific and technical rigor by identifying and implementing best-in-class algorithms, methodologies, and infrastructure that enable rapid experimentation and scaling. * Mentor and grow junior scientists and engineers, cultivating a high-performing, collaborative, and intellectually curious team. A day in the life As an Applied Scientist on the Sponsored Products and Brands Off-Search team, you will contribute to the development in Generative AI (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) to revolutionize our advertising flow, backend optimization, and frontend shopping experiences. This is a rare opportunity to redefine how ads are retrieved, allocated, and/or experienced—elevating them into personalized, contextually aware, and inspiring components of the customer journey. You will have the opportunity to fundamentally transform areas such as ad retrieval, ad allocation, whole-page relevance, and differentiated recommendations through the lens of GenAI. By building novel generative models grounded in both Amazon’s rich data and the world’s collective knowledge, your work will shape how customers engage with ads, discover products, and make purchasing decisions. If you are passionate about applying frontier AI to real-world problems with massive scale and impact, this is your opportunity to define the next chapter of advertising science. About the team The Off-Search team within Sponsored Products and Brands (SPB) is focused on building delightful ad experiences across various surfaces beyond Search on Amazon—such as product detail pages, the homepage, and store-in-store pages—to drive monetization. Our vision is to deliver highly personalized, context-aware advertising that adapts to individual shopper preferences, scales across diverse page types, remains relevant to seasonal and event-driven moments, and integrates seamlessly with organic recommendations such as new arrivals, basket-building content, and fast-delivery options. To execute this vision, we work in close partnership with Amazon Stores stakeholders to lead the expansion and growth of advertising across Amazon-owned and -operated pages beyond Search. We operate full stack—from backend ads-retail edge services, ads retrieval, and ad auctions to shopper-facing experiences—all designed to deliver meaningful value.
RO, Iasi
Are you a MS or PhD student interested in a 2026 internship in the field of machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, large language models and speech technology, robotics, computer vision, optimization, operations research, quantum computing, automated reasoning, or formal methods? If so, we want to hear from you! We are looking for students interested in using a variety of domain expertise to invent, design and implement state-of-the-art solutions for never-before-solved problems. You can find more information about the Amazon Science community as well as our interview process via the links below; https://www.amazon.science/ https://amazon.jobs/content/en/career-programs/university/science https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/university-roles/applied-science Key job responsibilities As an Applied Science Intern, you will own the design and development of end-to-end systems. You’ll have the opportunity to write technical white papers, create roadmaps and drive production level projects that will support Amazon Science. You will work closely with Amazon scientists and other science interns to develop solutions and deploy them into production. You will have the opportunity to design new algorithms, models, or other technical solutions whilst experiencing Amazon’s customer focused culture. The ideal intern must have the ability to work with diverse groups of people and cross-functional teams to solve complex business problems. A day in the life At Amazon, you will grow into the high impact person you know you’re ready to be. Every day will be filled with developing new skills and achieving personal growth. How often can you say that your work changes the world? At Amazon, you’ll say it often. Join us and define tomorrow. Some more benefits of an Amazon Science internship include; • All of our internships offer a competitive stipend/salary • Interns are paired with an experienced manager and mentor(s) • Interns receive invitations to different events such as intern program initiatives or site events • Interns can build their professional and personal network with other Amazon Scientists • Interns can potentially publish work at top tier conferences each year About the team Applicants will be reviewed on a rolling basis and are assigned to teams aligned with their research interests and experience prior to interviews. Start dates are available throughout the year and durations can vary in length from 3-6 months for full time internships. This role may available across multiple locations in the EMEA region (Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, South Africa, UAE, and UK). Please note these are not remote internships.
EE, Tallinn
Are you a MS or PhD student interested in a 2026 internship in the field of machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, large language models, speech technology, robotics, computer vision, optimization, operations research, quantum computing, automated reasoning, or formal methods? If so, we want to hear from you! We are looking for students interested in using a variety of domain expertise to invent, design and implement state-of-the-art solutions for never-before-solved problems. You can find more information about the Amazon Science community as well as our interview process via the links below; https://www.amazon.science/ https://amazon.jobs/content/en/career-programs/university/science https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/university-roles/applied-science Key job responsibilities As an Applied Science Intern, you will own the design and development of end-to-end systems. You’ll have the opportunity to write technical white papers, create roadmaps and drive production level projects that will support Amazon Science. You will work closely with Amazon scientists and other science interns to develop solutions and deploy them into production. You will have the opportunity to design new algorithms, models, or other technical solutions whilst experiencing Amazon’s customer focused culture. The ideal intern must have the ability to work with diverse groups of people and cross-functional teams to solve complex business problems. A day in the life At Amazon, you will grow into the high impact person you know you’re ready to be. Every day will be filled with developing new skills and achieving personal growth. How often can you say that your work changes the world? At Amazon, you’ll say it often. Join us and define tomorrow. Some more benefits of an Amazon Science internship include; • All of our internships offer a competitive stipend/salary • Interns are paired with an experienced manager and mentor(s) • Interns receive invitations to different events such as intern program initiatives or site events • Interns can build their professional and personal network with other Amazon Scientists • Interns can potentially publish work at top tier conferences each year About the team Applicants will be reviewed on a rolling basis and are assigned to teams aligned with their research interests and experience prior to interviews. Start dates are available throughout the year and durations can vary in length from 3-6 months for full time internships. This role may available across multiple locations in the EMEA region (Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, South Africa, UAE, and UK). Please note these are not remote internships.
GB, London
Are you a MS student interested in a 2026 internship in the field of machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, large language models and speech technology, robotics, computer vision, optimization, operations research, quantum computing, automated reasoning, or formal methods? If so, we want to hear from you! We are looking for a customer obsessed Data Scientist Intern who can innovate in a business environment, building and deploying machine learning models to drive step-change innovation and scale it to the EU/worldwide. If this describes you, come and join our Data Science teams at Amazon for an exciting internship opportunity. If you are insatiably curious and always want to learn more, then you’ve come to the right place. You can find more information about the Amazon Science community as well as our interview process via the links below; https://www.amazon.science/ https://amazon.jobs/content/en/career-programs/university/science Key job responsibilities As a Data Science Intern, you will have following key job responsibilities: • Work closely with scientists and engineers to architect and develop new algorithms to implement scientific solutions for Amazon problems. • Work on an interdisciplinary team on customer-obsessed research • Experience Amazon's customer-focused culture • Create and Deliver Machine Learning projects that can be quickly applied starting locally and scaled to EU/worldwide • Build and deploy Machine Learning models using large data-sets and cloud technology. • Create and share with audiences of varying levels technical papers and presentations • Define metrics and design algorithms to estimate customer satisfaction and engagement A day in the life At Amazon, you will grow into the high impact person you know you’re ready to be. Every day will be filled with developing new skills and achieving personal growth. How often can you say that your work changes the world? At Amazon, you’ll say it often. Join us and define tomorrow. Some more benefits of an Amazon Science internship include; • All of our internships offer a competitive stipend/salary • Interns are paired with an experienced manager and mentor(s) • Interns receive invitations to different events such as intern program initiatives or site events • Interns can build their professional and personal network with other Amazon Scientists • Interns can potentially publish work at top tier conferences each year About the team Applicants will be reviewed on a rolling basis and are assigned to teams aligned with their research interests and experience prior to interviews. Start dates are available throughout the year and durations can vary in length from 3-6 months for full time internships. This role may available across multiple locations in the EMEA region (Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain and the UK). Please note these are not remote internships.
IL, Tel Aviv
Are you a MS or PhD student interested in a 2026 internship in the field of machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, large language models, speech technology, robotics, computer vision, optimization, operations research, quantum computing, automated reasoning, or formal methods? If so, we want to hear from you! We are looking for students interested in using a variety of domain expertise to invent, design and implement state-of-the-art solutions for never-before-solved problems. You can find more information about the Amazon Science community as well as our interview process via the links below; https://www.amazon.science/ https://amazon.jobs/content/en/career-programs/university/science https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/university-roles/applied-science Key job responsibilities As an Applied Science Intern, you will own the design and development of end-to-end systems. You’ll have the opportunity to write technical white papers, create roadmaps and drive production level projects that will support Amazon Science. You will work closely with Amazon scientists and other science interns to develop solutions and deploy them into production. You will have the opportunity to design new algorithms, models, or other technical solutions whilst experiencing Amazon’s customer focused culture. The ideal intern must have the ability to work with diverse groups of people and cross-functional teams to solve complex business problems. A day in the life At Amazon, you will grow into the high impact person you know you’re ready to be. Every day will be filled with developing new skills and achieving personal growth. How often can you say that your work changes the world? At Amazon, you’ll say it often. Join us and define tomorrow. Some more benefits of an Amazon Science internship include; • All of our internships offer a competitive stipend/salary • Interns are paired with an experienced manager and mentor(s) • Interns receive invitations to different events such as intern program initiatives or site events • Interns can build their professional and personal network with other Amazon Scientists • Interns can potentially publish work at top tier conferences each year About the team Applicants will be reviewed on a rolling basis and are assigned to teams aligned with their research interests and experience prior to interviews. Start dates are available throughout the year and durations can vary in length from 3-6 months for full time internships. This role may available across multiple locations in the EMEA region (Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, UAE, and UK). Please note these are not remote internships.
GB, London
Are you a MS or PhD student interested in a 2026 internship in the field of machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, large language models and speech technology, robotics, computer vision, optimization, operations research, quantum computing, automated reasoning, or formal methods? If so, we want to hear from you! We are looking for students interested in using a variety of domain expertise to invent, design and implement state-of-the-art solutions for never-before-solved problems. You can find more information about the Amazon Science community as well as our interview process via the links below; https://www.amazon.science/ https://amazon.jobs/content/en/career-programs/university/science https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/university-roles/applied-science Key job responsibilities As an Applied Science Intern, you will own the design and development of end-to-end systems. You’ll have the opportunity to write technical white papers, create roadmaps and drive production level projects that will support Amazon Science. You will work closely with Amazon scientists and other science interns to develop solutions and deploy them into production. You will have the opportunity to design new algorithms, models, or other technical solutions whilst experiencing Amazon’s customer focused culture. The ideal intern must have the ability to work with diverse groups of people and cross-functional teams to solve complex business problems. A day in the life At Amazon, you will grow into the high impact person you know you’re ready to be. Every day will be filled with developing new skills and achieving personal growth. How often can you say that your work changes the world? At Amazon, you’ll say it often. Join us and define tomorrow. Some more benefits of an Amazon Science internship include; • All of our internships offer a competitive stipend/salary • Interns are paired with an experienced manager and mentor(s) • Interns receive invitations to different events such as intern program initiatives or site events • Interns can build their professional and personal network with other Amazon Scientists • Interns can potentially publish work at top tier conferences each year About the team Applicants will be reviewed on a rolling basis and are assigned to teams aligned with their research interests and experience prior to interviews. Start dates are available throughout the year and durations can vary in length from 3-6 months for full time internships. This role may available across multiple locations in the EMEA region (Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, South Africa, UAE, and UK). Please note these are not remote internships.
US, WA, Seattle
Passionate about books? The Amazon Books personalization team is looking for a talented Applied Scientist II to help develop and implement innovative science solutions to make it easier for millions of customers to find the next book they will love. In this role you will: - Collaborate within a dynamic team of scientists, economists, engineers, analysts, and business partners. - Utilize Amazon's large-scale computing and data resources to analyze customer behavior and product relationships. - Contribute to building and maintaining recommendation models, and assist in running A/B tests on the retail website. - Help develop and implement solutions to improve Amazon's recommendation systems. Key job responsibilities The role involves working with recommender systems that combine Natural Language Processing (NLP), Reinforcement Learning (RL), graph networks, and deep learning to help customers discover their next great read. You will assist in developing recommendation model pipelines, analyze deep learning-based recommendation models, and collaborate with engineering and product teams to improve customer-facing recommendations. As part of the team, you will learn and contribute across these technical areas while developing your skills in the recommendation systems space. A day in the life In your day-to-day role, you will contribute to the development and maintenance of recommendation models, support the implementation of A/B test experiments, and work alongside engineers, product teams, and other scientists to help deploy machine learning solutions to production. You will gain hands-on experience with our recommendation systems while working under the guidance of senior scientists. About the team We are Books Personalization a collaborative group of 5-7 scientists, 2 product leaders, and 2 engineering teams that aims to help find the right next read for customers through high quality personalized book recommendation experiences. Books Personalization is a part of the Books Content Demand organization, which focuses on surfacing the best books for customers wherever they are in their current book journey.
CA, ON, Toronto
Are you a passionate scientist in the computer vision area who is aspired to apply your skills to bring value to millions of customers? Here at Ring, we have a unique opportunity to innovate and see how the results of our work improve the lives of millions of people and make neighborhoods safer. As a Principal Applied Scientist, you will work with talented peers pushing the frontier of computer vision and machine learning technology to deliver the best experience for our neighbors. This is a great opportunity for you to innovate in this space by developing highly optimized algorithms that will work at scale. This position requires experience with developing Computer Vision, Multi-modal LLMs and/or Vision Language Models. You will collaborate with different Amazon teams to make informed decisions on the best practices in machine learning to build highly-optimized integrated hardware and software platforms. Key job responsibilities - You will be responsible for defining key research directions in Multimodal LLMs and Computer Vision, adopting or inventing new techniques, conducting rigorous experiments, publishing results, and ensuring that research is translated into practice. - You will develop long-term strategies, persuade teams to adopt those strategies, propose goals and deliver on them. - You will also participate in organizational planning, hiring, mentorship and leadership development. - You will serve as a key scientific resource in full-cycle development (conception, design, implementation, testing to documentation, delivery, and maintenance).
DE, BE, Berlin
Are you interested in enhancing Alexa user experiences through Large Language Models? The Alexa AI Berlin team is looking for an Applied Scientist to join our innovative team working on Large Language Models (LLMs), Natural Language Processing, and Machine/Deep Learning. You will be at the center of Alexa's LLM transformation, collaborating with a diverse team of applied and research scientists to enhance existing features and explore new possibilities with LLMs. In this role, you'll work cross-functionally with science, product, and engineering leaders to shape the future of Alexa. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Scientist in Alexa Science team: - You will develop core LLM technologies including supervised fine tuning and prompt optimization to enable innovative Alexa use cases - You will research and design novel metrics and evaluation methods to measure and improve AI performance - You will create automated, multi-step processes using AI agents and LLMs to solve complex problems - You will communicate effectively with leadership and collaborate with colleagues from science, engineering, and business backgrounds - You will participate in on-call rotations to support our systems and ensure continuous service availability A day in the life As an Applied Scientist, you will own the design and development of end-to-end systems. You’ll have the opportunity to write technical white papers, create technical roadmaps and drive production level projects that will support Amazon Science. You will have the opportunity to design new algorithms, models, or other technical solutions whilst experiencing Amazon’s customer focused culture. The ideal scientist must have the ability to work with diverse groups of people and cross-functional teams to solve complex business problems. About the team You would be part of the Alexa Science Team where you would be collaborating with Fellow Applied and research scientists!
US, VA, Arlington
The Generative AI Innovation Center (GenAIIC) at AWS helps AWS customers accelerate the use of generative AI and realize transformational business opportunities. This is a cross-functional team of ML scientists, engineers, architects, and strategists working step-by-step with customers and partners to build bespoke solutions that harness the power of generative AI. The team is looking for an experienced and talented Senior Applied Scientist who brings a strong blend of experience in machine learning, generative and agentic AI, and experience building scalable AI/ML solutions using cloud computing. The successful candidate will possess both technical and customer-facing skills that will allow you to be the technical “face” of GenAIIC with our customers. You will be able to drive discussions with technical and business leaders within customers and partners. You will possess technical background that enables you to interact with and give guidance to data/research/applied scientists and software engineers on the team. The ideal candidate will have think strategically about business, product, and technical issues. Key job responsibilities • Collaborate with AI/ML scientists and architects to research, design, develop, and evaluate generative AI solutions to address real-world challenges • Interact with customers directly to understand their business problems, aid them in implementation of generative AI solutions, brief customers and guide them on adoption patterns and paths to production • Help customers optimize their solutions through approaches such as model selection, training or tuning, right-sizing, distillation, and hardware optimization • Help customers develop scalable, secure and effective agentic workflows • Provide customer and market feedback to product and engineering teams to help define product direction