About me
I study how health care-seeking unfolds across digital media and everyday life, with particular attention to the societal and ethical dimensions of multimodal and AI-mediated communication, including emerging disparities and risks associated with video-based social media and AI companions. I further inform and design care-oriented AI systems that facilitate emotional expression and peer support. My work made contributions to Information Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Computational Social Science, and Health Behavior:
- I use AI-empowered data science, developing a novel workflow applying large vision language models (VLMs) for multimodal social media video data mining;
- I inform human-centered AI for mental well-being by outlining ethical design guidelines for emotion AI systems that preserve human connections;
- I identify care encounters as moments of change in real-world mental health help-seeking, through in-depth interviews with marginalized young adults.
My work has been published across top computing (ACM CSCW, ACM CHI, IEEE HRI), information science (JASIS&T, ASIS&T, L&ISR, ACM CHIIR), and health venues (JMIR, IEEE ICHI). I have received 4 research awards, including two Best Paper Awards from ASIS&T and two Honorable Mentions from the iConference and IEEE International Conference on Health Informatics. I have also received dissertation funding from the UT Austin Graduate School ($52,000) and the Berkeley Center for New Media ($2,500).
Some of my ongoing and future projects will explore the critical literacy of human–AI intimacy, unpack disparities in algorithm-mediated multimodal communication on short video platforms through large language models, and advance responsible AI to support the mental well-being of vulnerable communities. ✨ I’m always passionate about connecting and collaborating with like-minded researchers! Let’s stay connected — find me on socials or drop me an email!
I am lucky to be advised by Dr. Yan Zhang, who always supports my research and personal growth. I am also a research associate at the Computational Affective and Social Cognition Lab at UT Austin, led by Prof. Desmond C. Ong (Psychology) and Prof. Jessy Li (CS). Before my doctoral study, I graduated from Peking University in 2021 with two B.S. degrees in Information Management and Economics.
Recent Updates
- 🖌️ CSCW 2025 — attended the Doctoral Consortium, presented two papers, and met so many wonderful people! Nov, 2025
- 🤝 Co-organized Workshop — “Design as Hope: Reframing Complex Societal Challenges Through Collaborative Reflection” at CSCW 2025. Nov, 2025
- 🏫 Attend the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS) — Stanford University, Aug 4–15, 2025
- 🎓 Attend Oxford Internet Institute–UC Berkeley Doctoral Program — Full scholarship ($2500), Jul 25, 2025
- 📄 Full paper accepted by ASIS&T 2025 — “Video‑Mediated Emotion Disclosure: A Study of Mental Health Vlogging by People with Schizophrenia on YouTube”, Jun 25, 2025
- 🛠️ Attend the Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems (CSST) — Syracuse University, May 28–Jun 1, 2025
- 📄 Full paper accepted by CSCW25 — “From Regulation to Support: Centering Humans in Technology-Mediated Emotion Intervention in Care Contexts”, Jun 25, 2025
- 🤖 CHI25 LBW Accepted — Experimented with LLMs’ visual concept understanding with social media videos on depression, Feb 25, 2025
- 📄 New CSCW 25 Preprint — “When I lost it, they dragged me out”: How Sociotechnical Ecosystem of Resources Empower Marginalized Young Adults’ Mental Health Care-Seeking, Feb 25, 2025
- 🏆 Best Paper Awards from ASIS&T SIG-USE & SIG-HLTH — Young Adults’ Mental Health Help-Seeking Journey, Oct 24, 2024
- 🖌️ CSCW 24 Poster — “Using Large Language Models to Assist Video Content Analysis: An Exploratory Study of Short Videos on Depression”, Jul 24, 2024 (on arXiv)