Chiang's research is on computational models for learning human languages, particularly how to translate from one language to another. His work on applying formal grammars and machine learning to translation has been recognized with two best paper awards (at ACL 2005 and NAACL HLT 2009). He has received research grants from DARPA, NSF, and Google, has served on the executive board of NAACL and the editorial board of Computational Linguistics and JAIR, and is currently on the editorial board of Transactions of the ACL