About me

My research explores how to foster hybrid intelligence by enabling humans and AI to better understand, collaborate with, and adapt to each other. I focus on two interconnected directions:

  • Novel Mechanisms for Human–AI Collaboration: I investigate new paradigms of human–AI collaboration, including human–AI deliberation and trust calibration, and translate these insights into practical AI tools for real-world applications, such as DBox and Glancee.
  • User Modeling for Human-Aware AI: I explore how to computationally model users in human–AI collaboration and leverage these models to improve AI post-training, enabling AI systems to better understand and adapt to individual users.

Before joining ISCAS, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Computational Behavior Lab at Aalto University and the Finnish AI Center, working with Antti Oulasvirta. I received my PhD from the HCI Lab at HKUST, advised by Xiaojuan Ma. Before that, I got my Bachelor's degree from HIT and Master's degree from Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Open positions!

I’m recruiting research assistants, interns, and postdoctoral researchers to work on human–AI collaboration.

How to apply

Send your CV to mashuai@iscas.ac.cn with the subject [Master/RA/Postdoc Application] + Your Name.

News

  • Our paper "Living inside the Black Box" received an Honorable Mention Award at ISWC 2026!
  • Two papers were accepted to ACM UIST 2026. Thanks to Xinru and Nianlong.
  • Three papers were accepted to ACM CHI 2026. Thanks to Mengyao, Yuanhao, and Yuwei.
Earlier newsHide earlier news
  • One paper was accepted to ACM IUI 2026. Thanks to Xinyi and Antti.
  • Our "AI Afterlife" work gets covered by China Daily!
  • Attend CSCW 2025 in Bergen, Norway.
  • Attend Ubicomp 2025 in Espoo, Finland.
  • Attend CHI 2025 in Yokohama, Japan.
  • Three papers received ACM CHI 2025 Honorable Mention Award.
  • Five papers were accepted to ACM CHI 2025.
  • Start my Postdoc at Aalto University with Prof. Antti Oulasvirta.
  • Became Dr. Ma!
  • Passed my PhD thesis proposal defense.
  • Attend CHI 2024 in Hawaii, USA.
  • Three papers accepted by CHI 2024.
  • Arrived at ETH Zurich for a visit with Prof. April Wang's Peach Lab.
  • Attend CHI 2023 in Hamburg, Germany.
  • Three papers accepted by CHI 2023.
  • Paper on robot learning engagement accepted by TOCHI.
  • Passed PhD qualifying exam and became a PhD candidate.
  • Our paper "Glancee" gets conditionally accepted at CHI 2022.

Publications

NeurIPS 2026 Creative AI Track

FANVERSE: Exploring and Extending Branching Story Universes Across Canon and Fan Fiction

Lingyi Long, Xian Li, Shuai Ma, Yi Wang, Zhuoran Lu.

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Summary

Fan works form branching story universes, but existing platforms present them as isolated linear narratives. We introduce FANVERSE, an AI-powered system enabling users to explore interconnected story branches and create new ones. Evaluations demonstrate its effectiveness in story construction, cross-branch reasoning, and narrative extension.

Research areas: Human–AI collaboration.

Design and Artificial Intelligence

XAgen: Designing Explainability Support for Failure Detection and Correction in Multi-Agent Workflows

Xinru Wang, Zhuoran Lu, Shuai Ma, Ming Yin, Eunyee Koh, Mustafa Doga Dogan.

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Summary

This paper presents XAgen, a framework for designing explainability support in multi-agent workflows. It addresses the challenge of failure detection and correction by providing transparent and interpretable insights into agent behaviors and decisions.

Research areas: Explainable AI, Human–AI collaboration.

ICWSM 2027

Understanding Fortunetelling with Large Language Models in China: User Practices, Perceptions, and Impacts on Beliefs and Decisions

Xueer Lin, Chenyu Li, Shuai Ma, Yuhan Lyu, and Zhenhui Peng.

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Summary

This paper examines why people use LLMs for fortunetelling and how such interactions affect them. Through an analysis of 1,045 Chinese social media posts and interviews with 20 users, the study finds that LLM fortunetelling is used less for accurate prediction than for coping with uncertainty and seeking emotional support. Although it rarely changes users’ major beliefs or decisions, it can subtly shift their mindset and lead to small behavioral adjustments.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding.

UIST 2026

Graphionale: How Graph Visualizations of LLM Rationales Affect Human Decision Making

Xinru Wang, Zhexuan Ma, Ming Yin, Shuai Ma*, Thomas W Malone. (* corresponding author)

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Summary

This paper asks a simple but important question: when do graphical explanations actually help people reason with LLMs? Through a 204-participant study, it finds that turning dense LLM rationales into interactive argument maps can improve trust calibration in some tasks, but hurt it in others. Strikingly, the explanation format users prefer is not always the one that helps them make better decisions, showing that effective AI explanations must be matched to the task.

Research areas: Explainable AI, Human–AI trust calibration.

UIST 2026

Surpassing Human Wrist Constraints: Dexterity-Enhanced Techniques for Teleoperated Robotic Manipulation

Luyao Shen, Yihong Zhang, Qiyuan Song, Jiannan Li, Tianren Luo, Shuai Ma, Wei Sun, Yulong Bian, Jin Huang, Teng Han, Nianlong Li, Feng Tian.

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Summary

This paper addresses a key limitation of free-hand robot teleoperation: human wrist motion cannot fully exploit robotic arm dexterity. Based on 60 demonstration videos, the authors identify three robotic motion capabilities that exceed human biomechanics and propose four VR-inspired interaction techniques to extend users’ control. Evaluations in VR and on a UR5 robot show that these techniques improve rotation, alignment, and orientation control while reducing operator workload.

Research areas: Human–AI collaboration.

IUI 2026

Adaptive Prompt Elicitation for Text-to-Image Generation

Xinyi Wen, Lena Hegemann, Xiaofu Jin, Shuai Ma, Antti Oulasvirta.

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Summary

When we describe our needs to LLMs, we often know what we want internally, but struggle to articulate our needs and intentions clearly and precisely through language. To address this challenge, we propose Adaptive Prompt Elicitation, which adaptively selects visual queries to help AI quickly refine human intent. This approach significantly improves human intention alignment while introducing no additional workload.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, Human–AI collaboration.

CHI 2026

PriorWeaver: Prior Elicitation via Iterative Dataset Construction

Yuwei Xiao, Shuai Ma, Antti Oulasvirta, Eunice Jun.

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Summary

Expressing prior beliefs is a critical step in Bayesian analysis—but translating intuitive knowledge into statistical distributions is notoriously difficult. We introduce PriorWeaver, an interactive system that lets analysts visually construct datasets to express their assumptions. By turning intuitive beliefs into data and iteratively refining them through prior predictive checks, PriorWeaver helps analysts produce priors that better match their expectations.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, AI4Science / Social Science.

CHI 2026

Echoes of Norms: Investigating Counterspeech Bots' Influence on Bystanders in Online Communities

Mengyao Wang, Shuai Ma, Nuo Li, Peng Zhang, Chenxin Li, Ning Gu, Tun Lu.

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Summary

Hate speech moderation often focuses on offenders and targets—but what about the silent majority watching the conversation? We build Civilbot, a counterspeech bot designed to intervene in online discussions, and study how it influences bystanders. Our results show that reason-based counterspeech delivered with a positive tone is most effective, revealing how well-designed bots can subtly mobilize bystanders and shape healthier online discourse.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, AI4Science / Social Science.

CHI 2026

"Shall We Dig Deeper?": Designing and Evaluating Strategies for LLM Agents to Advance Knowledge Co-Construction in Asynchronous Online Discussions

Yuanhao Zhang, Wenbo Li, Xiaoyu Wang, Kangyu Yuan, Shuai Ma, Xiaojuan Ma.

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Summary

Online discussions promise collective knowledge building—but many stall at shallow exchanges. We design an LLM-powered facilitation agent that strategically intervenes to help conversations dig deeper. Through a study with 60 participants across multiple discussions, we show that AI interventions can push discussions from surface-level sharing toward deeper reasoning and synthesis, revealing how AI can sustain more meaningful online discourse.

Research areas: Human–AI collaboration, AI4Science / Social Science.

CSCW 2025

When Traditional Medicine Meets AI: Critical Considerations for AI-Empowered Clinical Support in Traditional Medicine

Yuling Sun, Wenjing Yue, Xiaofu Jin, Shuai Ma, Xiaojuan Ma, Xiaoling Wang.

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Summary

Traditional Medicine (TM) has long served as a cornerstone of healthcare, yet its integration with AI remains limited. Through interviews with 16 TM clinicians, we explore how AI-powered clinical systems are perceived and used in practice. Our findings reveal low adoption due to TM’s unique diagnostic logic and data challenges. We discuss these barriers and propose ways to better align AI innovations with the realities of traditional medicine.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, Human–AI collaboration.

CHI 2025 · Honorable Mention

Towards Human-AI Deliberation: Design and Evaluation of LLM-Empowered Deliberative AI for AI-Assisted Decision-Making

Shuai Ma, Qiaoyi Chen, Xinru Wang, Chengbo Zheng, Zhenhui Peng, Ming Yin, Xiaojuan Ma.

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What happens when you disagree with your AI collaborator during decision-making? We explore how to resolve such conflicts by leveraging the power of Retrieval-Augmented Generation. Acting as a communication bridge, a large language model enables deliberation between human decision-makers and domain-specific smaller models, significantly improving decision quality in the face of disagreement.

Research areas: Human–AI collaboration, Human–AI trust calibration, Explainable AI.

CHI 2025 · Honorable Mention

"AI Afterlife" as Digital Legacy: Perceptions, Expectations, and Concerns

Ying Lei, Shuai Ma*, Yuling Sun, Xiaojuan Ma. (* corresponding author)

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Summary

Can AI-generated digital humans serve as a form of digital legacy—allowing us to “live on” in this world? Our comprehensive qualitative analysis investigates the full lifecycle of the “AI afterlife,” shedding light on how society envisions—and grapples with—this future.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding.

CHI 2025 · Honorable Mention

Signaling Human Intentions to Service Robots: Understanding the Use of Social Cues during In-Person Conversations

Hanfang Lyu, Xiaoyu Wang, Nandi Zhang, Shuai Ma, Qian Zhu, Yuhan Luo, Fugee Tsung, Xiaojuan Ma.

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Summary

How do humans and service robots naturally express intentions through interactive actions in social settings? Our work offers valuable insights into natural human-robot interactions in the era of embodied intelligence, revealing how subtle, intuitive behaviors can serve as effective communicative cues.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, Human–AI collaboration.

CHI 2025

Scaffolded Turns and Logical Conversations: Designing Humanized LLM-Powered Conversational Agents for Hospital Admission Interviews

Dingdong Liu, Yujing Zhang, Bolin Zhao, Shuai Ma, Chuhan Shi, Xiaojuan Ma.

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We present a humanized conversational agent for hospital admissions that balances efficiency and empathy. Co-designed with clinicians, our system uses dynamic graph-based conversation flows and context-aware scaffolding to adaptively guide interviews. It outperforms existing solutions in both data accuracy and user experience, offering a promising path for AI-assisted healthcare interactions.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, Human–AI collaboration.

CCCF 2025

以双向理解促进人智协同——以人机合作决策为例

Shuai Ma, Xiaojuan Ma, Chuhan Shi, Chengbo Zheng.

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Summary

We promote human-AI hybrid intelligence from the perspective of mutual understanding between humans and AI. This paper systematically introduces our previous work on enabling human-AI hybrid intelligence by enhancing human understanding of AI, AI’s understanding of humans, and humans’ self-understanding.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, Human–AI trust calibration, Explainable AI, Human–AI collaboration.

ArXiv 2024

Beyond Recommender: An Exploratory Study of the Effects of Different AI Roles in AI-Assisted Decision Making

Shuai Ma, Chenyi Zhang, Xinru Wang, Xiaojuan Ma, Ming Yin.

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Summary

AI is often used as a recommender in decision-making, but this can reduce human analytical thinking and cause over-reliance on AI. This paper examines three AI roles—Recommender, Analyzer, and Devil’s Advocate—at two performance levels, revealing their unique strengths and weaknesses and informing the design of adaptive AI assistants.

Research areas: Human–AI trust calibration, Human–AI collaboration.

CHI 2024

"Are You Really Sure?" Understanding the Effects of Human Self-Confidence Calibration in AI-Assisted Decision Making

Shuai Ma, Xinru Wang, Ying Lei, Chuhan Shi, Ming Yin, Xiaojuan Ma.

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This paper investigates human self-confidence calibration in AI-assisted decision-making, conducting three user studies to analyze its effect on human-AI collaboration. Findings indicate that proper self-confidence calibration improves rational behavior and appropriate reliance in human-AI teams.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, Human–AI trust calibration, Human–AI collaboration.

CHI 2024

Charting the Future of AI in Project-Based Learning: A Co-Design Exploration with Students

Chengbo Zheng, Kangyu Yuan, Bingcan Guo, Reza Hadi Mogavi, Zhenhui Peng, Shuai Ma, Xiaojuan Ma.

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Summary

This study investigates using AI usage data for learning assessment in project-based education. Through workshops with college students, we explored how AI data can reflect students’ skills and contributions, informing the development of future educational tools.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding.

CHI 2024

Unpacking ICT-supported Social Connections and Support of Late-life Migration: From the Lens of Social Convoys

Ying Lei, Shuai Ma, Yuling Sun.

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Summary

This paper explores the ICT-mediated social connections of late-life migrants, focusing on the dynamic changes in their social networks and the roles of ICT in these shifts. Our findings offer in-depth insights and design implications for future ICT-based support systems for this demographic.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding.

DIS 2024

Towards Feature Engineering with Human and AI's Knowledge: Understanding Data Workers' Perceptions in Human&AI-Assisted Feature Engineering Design

Qian Zhu, Dakuo Wang, Shuai Ma, April Wang, Zixin Chen, Udayan Khurana, Xiaojuan Ma.

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How do data scientists view suggestions from peers and AI when performing feature engineering? We designed a human-AI collaborative feature engineering framework and conducted an empirical study to uncover key opportunities and limitations in current AI support.

Research areas: Human–AI collaboration, AI4Science / Social Science.

UIST 2024 Adjunct

SelfGauge: An Intelligent Tool to Support Student Self-assessment in GenAI-enhanced Project-based Learning

Chengbo Zheng, Zeyu Huang, Shuai Ma, Xiaojuan Ma.

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Summary

Project-based learning in the age of generative AI makes assessment challenging. SelfGauge supports student self-assessment by analyzing GenAI usage and project artifacts, helping students define criteria, seek feedback, and reflect on performance.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, Human–AI collaboration.

CHI 2023

Who Should I Trust: AI or Myself? Leveraging Human and AI Correctness Likelihood to Promote Appropriate Trust in AI-Assisted Decision-Making

Shuai Ma, Ying Lei, Xinru Wang, Chengbo Zheng, Chuhan Shi, Ming Yin, Xiaojuan Ma.

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Summary

We proposed to promote humans’ appropriate trust based on the correctness likelihood of both sides at a task-instance level. Results from a between-subjects experiment showed that our strategies promoted more appropriate human trust in AI compared with only using AI confidence.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, Human–AI trust calibration, Human–AI collaboration.

CHI 2023

RetroLens: A Human-AI Collaborative System for Multi-step Retrosynthetic Route Planning

Chuhan Shi, Yicheng Hu, Shenan Wang, Shuai Ma, Chengbo Zheng, Xiaojuan Ma, Qiong Luo.

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Targeting a multi-step human-AI collaboration task for chemists, we proposed RetroLens through a participatory design process. AI contributes by both joint action and algorithm-in-the-loop collaboration.

Research areas: Human–AI collaboration, AI4Science / Social Science.

CHI 2023

Competent but Rigid: Identifying the Gap in Empowering AI to Participate Equally in Group Decision-Making

Chengbo Zheng, Yuheng Wu, Chuhan Shi, Shuai Ma, Jiehui Luo, Xiaojuan Ma.

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We studied what happens when AI participates equally in human group decision-making. Although the voice of AI is considered valuable, it still plays a secondary role because it cannot fully follow discussion dynamics or make progressive contributions.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, Human–AI collaboration.

CSCW 2021

CASS: Towards Building A Social-Support Chatbot for Online Health Community

Liuping Wang, Dakuo Wang, Feng Tian, Zhenhui Peng, Xiangmin Fan, Zhan Zhang, Shuai Ma, Mo Yu, Xiaojuan Ma, Hongan Wang.

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Summary

We investigated how chatbots can be designed to provide information and emotional support for pregnant women in an online health community.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, Human–AI collaboration.

CHI 2019 · Honorable Mention

SmartEye: Assisting Instant Photo Taking via Integrating User Preference with Deep View Proposal Network

Shuai Ma, Zijun Wei, Feng Tian, Xiangmin Fan, Jianming Zhang, Xiaohui Shen, Zhe Lin, Jin Huang, Radomir Mech, Dimitris Samaras, Hongan Wang.

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How to effectively personalize a general model? We proposed a user preference modeling method based on interactive machine learning and designed a confidence-based integration framework to personalize a deep neural network for individual photo composition preferences.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, Human–AI collaboration.

UIST 2019 Adjunct

Pre-screen: Assisting Material Screening in Early-stage of Video Editing

Qian Zhu*, Shuai Ma*, Cuixia Ma. (* equal contribution)

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Summary

Video editing is challenging due to the time-consuming task of screening useful clips from raw footage. Based on surveys and interviews, we developed Pre-screen, a tool that offers global and detailed video analysis and intelligent material screening.

Research areas: Human–AI collaboration.

UIST 2019 Adjunct

What Did I Miss? Assisting User-adaptive Missed Content Reviewing in MOOC Learning

Qian Zhu*, Shuai Ma*. (* equal contribution)

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Summary

This paper introduces Reminder, a system that detects divided attention in MOOCs using cameras on PC and mobile devices. It predicts attention scores, adapts to users, and offers visualizations to help learners review missed content.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding.

CHI 2019 Workshop

Human-AI Interaction in Healthcare: Three Case Studies About How Patient(s) And Doctors Interact with AI in a Multi-Tiers Healthcare Network

Yunzhi Li, Liuping Wang, Shuai Ma, Xiangmin Fan, Zijun Wang, Junfeng Jiao, Dakuo Wang.

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Summary

This position paper introduces three ongoing research projects focused on designing, developing, and evaluating systems for human-AI interaction in healthcare across a multi-tier healthcare network.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding, Human–AI collaboration.

CHI 2018 LBW

Implicit detection of motor impairment in Parkinson's disease from everyday smartphone interactions

Jing Gao, Feng Tian, Junjun Fan, Dakuo Wang, Xiangmin Fan, Yicheng Zhu, Shuai Ma, Jin Huang, Hongan Wang.

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We explored the feasibility and accuracy of detecting motor impairment in Parkinson’s disease via implicitly sensing and analyzing users’ everyday smartphone interactions, achieving strong discrimination performance in a 42-subject study.

Research areas: User modeling & understanding.

Academic activities

Academic service

Program committee

  • 2027ACM CHI 2027 (Associate Chair)
  • 2027ACM IUI 2027 (Senior Program Committee Member)
  • 2026ACM CHI 2026 (Associate Chair – understanding people)
  • 2026ACM IUI 2026 (Senior Program Committee Member)
  • 2025ACM CHI 2025 (Associate Chair – computational interaction)
  • 2025ACM DIS 2025 (Associate Chair – AI and Design)
  • 2024ACM FAccT 2024
  • 2024ACM CHI LBW 2024 (1AC)
  • 2023ACM CHI LBW 2023 (1AC)

Editorial Board

  • Journal | Computer-Human Interaction and Intelligence

Reviewing

  • Journal | Nature Human Behaviour
  • Journal | ACM TOCHI
  • Journal | IJHCS
  • ACM CHI | 2027,2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019
  • ACM UIST | 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023
  • ACM DIS | 2025
  • IEEE VIS | 2025
  • ACM CSCW | 2025, 2023

Received Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviews at CHI 2023, CHI 2024, CHI 2025, and DIS 2025.

Academic visits
  • ETH Zurich — Visiting Scholar with Prof. April Yi Wang (2023.10–2024.1)
  • Purdue University — Visiting Scholar with Prof. Ming Yin (2023.2–2023.7, remote)
Teaching
  • 2024–2025 Spring ELEC‑E7871 — Advanced Topics in Human‑Computer Interaction (Guest Lecturer, Aalto University)
  • 2023–2024 Spring COMP4321 — Search Engines for Web (TA, HKUST)
  • 2021–2022 Fall COMP 1021 — Introduction to Computer Science (TA, HKUST)
  • 2020–2021 Spring COMP 1021 — Introduction to Computer Science (TA, HKUST)
  • 2019 August — CCF courses (Teaching Volunteer, Lvliang, Shanxi, China)
  • 2018–2019 — Introduction to Natural User Interfaces (Lecturer, Beijing Zhongguancun No.1 Primary School)
Awards & recognition
  • 2026Honorable Mention Award @ ISWC 2026
  • 2025Honorable Mention Award @ CHI 2025 × 3
  • 2024Best Paper Award @ SIGCHI GBA Chapter Pre-CHI 2024
  • 2024HKUST RedBird Academic Excellence Award
  • 2023HKUST PhD Overseas Research Award
  • 2023SIGCHI Gary Marsden Travel Awards
  • 2020HKUST Redbird PhD Scholarship
  • 2019Honorable Mention Award @ CHI 2019
  • 2019President Scholarship, Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • 2018National Scholarship for Graduate