People
Faculty
Han Li
Han Li is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Communication and New Media at National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on AI in healthcare, computational communication, human-computer interaction, and online support communities. As a computational and mixed-method researcher, she used a wide variety of research methods to explore how information and communication technologies can be designed and used to improve health and well-being, enhanced social relationship, and contribute to social good.
Rongxin Ouyang
Rongxin Ouyang is an PhD student at the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore. He researches the societal and political implications of digital media using computational, causal, or quantitative methods; with a particular interest in the inequality and audience engagement of social media.
Anita Kuei-Chun Liu
Anita Kuei-Chun Liu is a Postdoctoal Fellow in the Department of Communication and New Media at National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on social movements, public opinion, and framing effects in political, health, and science information contexts. Her work draws methods from social and computer sciences to explore the online discussion and role of social media, in the promotion of social movements and social change, and the effects of campaign framing on public opinion(e.g., computational text analysis, network analysis and experiment). She recevided a M.A. in Communication and Information from Rutgers University–New Brunswick, and a Ph.D. in Communication from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
Jinyuan Zhan
Jinyuan Zhan is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication and New Media at National University of Singapore. Her research interests lie in health communication, human-machine relationship and media psychology. She is currently investigating the potential harms of AI and how they could impact human's mental and physical health.
Renwen Zhang
Renwen Zhang is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore. Her research lies at the intersection of health communication, human-computer interaction, and interpersonal communication. She examines the design, use, and effects of digital technology for promoting wellbeing and mental health.
Subhayan Mukerjee
Subhayan Mukerjee is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communications and New Media, and a principal investigator at the Centre for Trusted Internet and Community at the National University of Singapore. He researches online audiences using computational methods, and teaches courses in quantitative methods, programming, and data visualization.Speakers
Prasanta Bhattacharya
Dr. Prasanta Bhattacharya is a Senior Scientist and Innovation Lead with the Social and Cognitive Computing Department at the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), A*STAR Singapore, where he works on network science and behavioral analytics. Prasanta holds a Ph.D in Information Systems from the Department of Information Systems and Analytics, National University of Singapore, where he studied network science with a special focus on predictive and inferential methods in large social networks. His current research agenda aims at understanding the role of big data in emerging social and business applications from finance, education and healthcare. Prasanta actively collaborates with major industry partners from around the world, and has presented his research in leading computer science, information systems and marketing science venues.
Noshir Contractor
Dr. Noshir Contractor is the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science, the School of Communication and the Kellogg School of Management and Director of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) Research Group at Northwestern University. He is also the former President of the International Communication Association (ICA). Professor Contractor has been at the forefront of three emerging interdisciplines: network science, computational social science and web science. He is investigating how social and knowledge networks form – and perform – in contexts including business, scientific communities, healthcare and space travel.
He Tianyu
Dr. Tianyu [tea-n-you] is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organisation at the National University of Singapore Business School. She received her.D. in Management from INSEAD; M.A. in Sociology from Emory University; LL.B in Sociology and B.S. in Psychology from Peking University. She is curious about characteristics that set high-performing groups apart and seek to discover ways to enhance collaborative problem-solving and creativity. Employing a dynamic mixed-methods approach, her research delves into well-established aspects of designing groups, such as effective hierarchies and leadership, while also exploring exciting new frontiers such as the integration of technological tools and Artificial Intelligence in collaboration.
Yingdan Lu
Yingdan Lu (PhD, Stanford University) is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on digital technology, political communication, and information manipulation in authoritarian and democratic contexts. Her research employs both computational and qualitative methods to understand how authoritarian governments use digital media and artificial intelligence to maintain their rule, and how individuals experience visual media and the impacts. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Political Communication, New Media & Society, Human-Computer Interaction, Computational Communication Research, and among other peer-reviewed journals.
Jiaxin Pei
Jiaxin Pei is a fifth-year PhD Candidate at the School of Information, University of Michigan. He works on Human-centered AI, NLP, Information Systems and Computational Social Science. He is the author of POTATO, an open-source machine learning annotation system used by worldwide institutions. His work has received best paper and honorable mention awards at multiple conferences and workshops.
Koustuv Saha
Koustuv Saha is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in 2021. His research interests are in social computing, computational social science, human-centered machine learning, and FATE. He adopts machine learning, natural language, and causal inference analysis to examine human behavior and wellbeing using different forms of digital data, including social media and multimodal sensing data. His work questions the underlying assumptions of data-driven inferences and the possible harms such inferences might lead to. His research is situated in an interdisciplinary and human-centered context and bears implications for various stakeholders. His work has been published at various venues, including CHI, CSCW, ICWSM, IMWUT (UbiComp), Scientific Reports, JMIR, FAccT, among others. He is a recipient of the 2021 Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, Foley Scholarship Award from the GVU Center, Snap Research Fellowship, and a finalist of the Symantec Graduate Fellowship. His research has won the Outstanding Study Design Award at ICWSM, and has been covered by several media outlets, including the New York Times, Vox, CBC Radio, NBC, 11Alive, the Hill, and the Commonwealth Times. He was previously a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, Montreal, in the Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics in AI (FATE) group. During his Ph.D., he did research internships at Snap Research, Microsoft Research, Max Planck Institute, and Fred Hutch Cancer Research. Earlier, he completed his B.Tech (Hons.) in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur. He was awarded the NTSE Scholarship by the Govt. of India, and he has six years of overall industry research experience.
Joe Simons
Dr. Joe Simons is a Principal Scientist and Group Manager (Social & Behavioural Inference) in the Social & Cognitive Computing (SCC) Department at the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) and Lead of A*STAR’s Social Sciences & Technology Horizontal Technology Programme Office (SST HTCO). A social psychologist by training, he has extensive experience collaborating with computational scientists and leading interdisciplinary research teams. His work applies methodologies from both behaviorual and computational sciences – such as predictive modelling and language processing - to better address social-behavioural questions. His research has been featured in outlets including Communication Research, IEEE Pervasive Computing, and Media Psychology
Chris Chao Su
Chris Chao Su (Ph.D., The Chinese University of Hong Kong) is an assistant professor of Emerging Media Studies (EMS) and Computing & Data Science (CDS) at Boston University, USA. His research examines the intersection of media audiences, social media, and platform governance, employing computational methods. His work has been published in the Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, Digital Journalism, The International Journal of Press/Politics, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, International Journal of Communication, etc.
Liang Ze Wong
Dr. Liang Ze Wong is a Senior Scientist at IHPC. He also teaches business analytics at NUS Business School, where he is an adjunct assistant professor. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Washington, where he researched abstract algebra and topology. His current interests are in natural language processing, topic modelling, data analytics, and in applications of large language models to qualitative social science research. He was an attendee of SICSS-Singapore 2023.
Diyi Yang
Diyi Yang is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. Her research focuses on human-centered natural language processing and computational social science. She is a recipient of Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship (2021), NSF CAREER Award (2022), ONR Young Investigator Award (2023), and Sloan Research Fellowship (2024). Her work has received multiple paper awards or nominations at top NLP and HCI conferences (e.g., ACL, EMNLP, SIGCHI, and CSCW).
Chao Yu
Chao Yu (Ph.D., Cornell University) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore. His research focuses on social impacts of new media. He uses big data studies to uncover hidden patterns on new media platforms that can create inequalities or biases, as well as identifying policies and strategies to improve them.
Alvin Zhou
Dr. Alvin Zhou is an Assistant Professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication. His research centers around computational social science and strategic communication. His work has appeared in journals across communication subfields, including New Media & Society, Journal of Communication, Journal of Public Relations Research, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Mass Communication and Society, Public Relations Review, Social Media + Society, and Political Communication. Dr. Zhou earned his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School. Prior to that, he earned an M.A. in Statistics and Data Science from the Wharton School and an M.A. in Strategic Public Relations from the University of Southern California Annenberg School. He graduated from Tsinghua University with dual degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Journalism.Teaching Assistants
Guangyu Cui
Guangyu is a research assistant at the Centre for Trusted Internet and Community at the National University of Singapore majored in Data Science and Analytics. His research interest lies in utilizing Natural Language Processing (NLP) approaches and Large Language Models to better understand human linguistic behaviours on online communities and social media.
Xuejiao Lin
Xuejiao Lin is a Ph.D. candidate in Marketing at the School of Business, Renmin University of China. She is also a visiting Ph.D. student at the National University of Singapore, specializing in Communication and New Media. Her research focuses on social media marketing and the impact of social factors on consumer behavior.Participants
Xueyan Cao, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Xueyan Cao is a Ph.D. student in the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interest involves health communication and human-machine interaction. She attempts to explore the interaction between health beliefs and the media environment through the computational approach.
Yi Ting Chen, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Yi Ting Chen is a MA Research student at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication in the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include computational communication, social media and news. She is particularly keen in exploring the impact of regulations on news production and consumption.
Victoria Chua, Nanyang Technological University
Victoria Chua is a master’s student in Psychology (Research), and the mental health product manager in Mindsigns Health, a start-up focused on neuropsychiatric care. Victoria’s research interests involve drawing upon psychological and computational methods to analyse and understand teamwork communications, parent-child interactions, extremist content and digital mental health.
Jianing Deng, Duke University
Jianing Deng is a master student at Duke University, political science department. She majors in Behavior and Identity and sub-major in Political Methodology at Duke. Her research attempts to investigate political communication, especially propaganda in authoritarian regime, with a regional focus on China. Methodologically, she interest in using computational methods to analyze the dynamics of state-citizen interaction in digital spaces. Prior to graduate school, she received BA in political science at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou in 2023.
Min Gong, National University of Singapore
Min Gong is a first-year PhD student at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, and her research interests include the trade-off between data use and privacy protection, the balance between privacy policy formulation and generative AI evolution, racial representation and meritocracy in public service systems, etc.
Kunmei Han, National University of Singapore
Kunmei Han is a PhD candidate in Department of English, Linguistics, and Theatre Studies at National University of Singapore. Kunmei’s research focus on corpus linguistics and clinical linguistics. Her current study investigates language changes in a normal aging process. Kunmei got her bachelor’s degree from Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Yuhan Hu, University of Oxford
Yuhan Hu is a DPhil candidate in Politics at University of Oxford and currently an exchange scholar at Yale University. She applies computational methods to study contentious politics under authoritarian contexts. Her ongoing DPhil thesis examines the authoritarian regimes’ responses to collective action.
Tengjiao Huang, DSO National Laboratories
Dr. Huang Tengjiao, Senior Social and Behavioural Research Scientist at DSO National Laboratories, leverages psychological insights to bolster national security. Holding a Ph.D. in Psychology from Singapore Management University, she has published research that informs and addresses critical global issues like climate change. Her expertise includes motivation, individual differences, and decision-making, with a current interest in harnessing computational techniques to address societal challenges.
Xiaoyun Huang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Xiaoyun Hunag is an MPhil student in Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. With an interdisciplinary background in both engineering and social science, she conducts mixed-method projects that combine perspectives of computational social science and qualitative studies. Currently, she is working on her MPhil thesis on feminism and digital communities.
Jianfeng Lan, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Jianfeng (Jeff) Lan is a Ph.D. student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Media and Communication. His research specializes in human-machine communication, with a focus on the socio-psychological impact on various social relationships such as intimacy, trust, and collaboration. His previous research encompassed topics like virtual uploaders (VUP), gender stereotypes in machine interactions, and the dynamics of human-machine love affairs.
Gionnieve Lim, Singapore University of Technology and Design
Gionnieve Lim is a doctoral student at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. Her work lies at the intersection of human-AI interaction and misinformation, where she investigates the use of automated labelling interventions to mitigate misinformation on social media. She is interested in how collaboration takes place between humans and AI and takes a human-centered approach in her work, focusing on aspects like trust and agency.
Xinyi Liu, Northwestern University
Xinyi Liu is a Master’s student at Nanyang Technological University, and an incoming student at Northwestern. She is interested in experimental and computational methods to study digital media technologies in various topics.
Siyuan Brandon Loh, Institute of High Performance Computing (Astar)
Brandon is concurrently a research engineer at the Institute of High Performance Computing and is pursuing an MS in Statistics at the National University of Singapore. He is incredibly passionate about advancing social science research through honest and transparent data science practises.
Qianfeng Lu, Università della Svizzera italiana
Qianfeng Lu is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Communication, Culture, and Society at the Università della Svizzera italiana (University of Lugano) in Switzerland. Her research focuses on patient-provider communication, patient empowerment, and health literacy. Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Medical Internet Research, BMC Public Health, and Patient Education and Counseling. Her latest research explores physicians' roles in protecting patients from misinformation on social media.
Tianqi Song, National University of Singapore
Tianqi Song is currently a PhD student in Computer Science at the National University of Singapore. Her work lies at the intersection of computer science, design and psychology, including human-centered AI, human-AI collaboration and visualization. Her recent work has focused on designing multi-agent systems for social good and exploring AI literacy for marginalized groups.
Jiajun Tang, Nanjing University
Jiajun Tang is a master's student at the School of Information Management, Nanjing University. His research interests focus on library and information science. He attempts to study issues related to reading in society using methods such as large-scale text analysis and complex network analysis.
Youyi Wei, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Youyi Wei is a PhD student in the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests are digital journalism and computational social science. She is exploring visual media in witness news and gatekeeping dynamics on social media.
Tianyi Yang, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Tianyi Yang is a PhD student in Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research interests include online collective action, youth culture, and algorithmic impact. She is exploring popular culture topics by combining computational methods with qualitative methods.