Ti-Chung Cheng

I am a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), co-advised by Prof. Karrie Karahalios and Prof. Hari Sundaram, who lead the Social Spaces group and the Crowd Dynamics Lab, respectively.

My current research focuses on quadratic surveys, a novel method for eliciting individual preferences for collective action. This work is part of a broader interest in the core inquiry: “How can people use computational tools to make better decisions?” My research spans topics in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), including collective decision-making mechanisms (how misinformation influences social choices; quadratic surveys), data visualization (quadratic surveys; COVID policy), and human-AI interaction (iterative prompt priming for LLMs; smart homes). During my Master’s at UIUC, I worked with Prof. Aditya Parameswaran and Prof. Karrie Karahalios on the Dataspread Project.

I received my B.Sc. degree from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. I was a research student in the Husky Team, supervised by Prof. James Cheng. I worked on distributed machine learning algorithms for nearest-neighbor search during my undergraduate studies. My academic advisor was Prof. John C.S. Lui.

Outside of research, I build production systems and teach. I have served as a teaching assistant across large, mid-sized, and small classes, supporting in-person, online, and hybrid formats; covering introductory, advanced, and graduate-level courses; and contributing to MOOCs—receiving multiple teaching recognitions. I founded Here@Illinois, a cloud-based attendance system used by thousands of students and hundreds of staff at the university. My industry experience includes research internships at Microsoft Research, software engineering at Salesforce, and machine learning at KKBOX. I enjoy full-stack web development and regularly mentor students in HCI, CSCW, and software engineering.

Click here for my latest CV. My CV is usually more up-to-date than my webpage.

🎓 PhD in Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Expected May 2026) #

• Proposed thesis topic: “Quadratic Surveys: Empirical Research on using Quadratic Voting Mechanism as a Preference Elicitation Tool”

🎓 Master of Science in Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2018–2020) #

• Master thesis: “Comparing Quadratic Voting and Likert Surveys”

🎓 Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Minor in Business Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (2013–2017) #

• Final year project: “Efficient Nearest Neighbors Search in Distributed Manner”

🎓 Exchange & short-term visits #

• Exchange student, Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2015)
• Short-term visiting student, Whitman College; Princeton University (2016)

Research Intern, Microsoft Research — Special Projects (Feb 2024 – May 2024) #

• Mentors: Madeleine Daepp, Robert Ness.
• Investigated empirically how large language models influence high-stakes decision-making via misinformation and generative propaganda.
• Analyzed 150K+ crowd-sourced articles using time-series, linguistic, and qualitative methods to quantify signal and trace propagation patterns.
• Contributed cultural and regional expertise to improve framing and validity of internal discussions and external publications (see related commentary: The Economist — “Video will kill the truth if monitoring doesn’t improve” (Mar 2024)).

Research Intern, Microsoft Research — Software Analysis & Intelligence (SAINTES) (May 2023 – Aug 2023) #

• Mentors: Denae Ford Robinson, Nicole Forsgren, Carmen Badea, Christian Bird, Tom Zimmermann, Rob DeLine.
• Designed and implemented GEMS, an agentic LLM system producing theory-driven metrics for team pairing using GitHub and DevOps signals. Built with GPT-4 API, AutoGen, Guidance, FLAML, and MySQL. (Project page)
• Introduced iterative prompt priming to elicit expert-informed metrics; evaluated via qualitative comparisons on DevOps performance proxies showing improved specificity and theoretical grounding.
• Defined a two-stage within-subject qualitative study to probe expert perceptions of LLM-assisted team-matching workflows.

Graduate Researcher, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Aug 2018 – Present) #

• Designed, built, and evaluated a Quadratic Survey system grounded in quadratic voting for preference elicitation in collective decision-making, using mixed methods (quantitative statistics + qualitative user research). Results presented at CHI / CI / CSCW venues. (Project page)
• Led multiple HCI projects on human–AI interaction in smart homes, spreadsheet analysis workflows, and design-process tooling; mentored students and coordinated experiments.
• Prototyped systems with React, Nest.js, and MongoDB; evaluated via interviews, surveys, click-stream logs, and in-lab behavioral experiments.
• Analyzed experimental data using open coding, thematic analysis, and Bayesian modeling to derive robust inference about preference intensity and collective insights.

Graduate Teaching Assistant, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Aug 2018 - Present) #

• See Teaching for more details.

Software Engineer Intern, Salesforce — Lightning Component Services Team (May 2020 – Aug 2020) #

• Built a VS Code plugin in TypeScript reducing XML development time by ~50% for Salesforce engineers.
• Contributed to Red Hat XML VS Code extension (PR #292) and Salesforce VS Code extension (PR #2726).

Software Engineer Intern, Salesforce — Lightning Component Services Team (May 2019 – Aug 2019) #

• Built pipelines and designed three dashboards for front-end cache monitoring using Java, Grafana, and Splunk to visualize daily logs at billion-scale.
• Optimized dashboard queries by ~10× for readability and maintainability.

Machine Learning Research Intern, KKBOX (May 2018 – Aug 2018) #

• Mentor: Dr. Yian Chen
• Implemented an NLP pipeline for Mandarin named-entity recognition achieving >90% accuracy.
• Designed a pattern-based relation-extraction pipeline for cross-language music content using 3B+ music records.

Undergraduate Research Assistant, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Dec 2015 – Dec 2017) #

• Mentor: Prof. James Cheng
• Conducted research on distributed hash-based nearest-neighbor search algorithms with a publication at SIGMOD.
• Built a 15% more time-efficient and scalable image-retrieval system compared to OpenCV FLANN Library.
• Implemented Collision Counting LSH in C++; details: Implementation and Analysis of Collision Counting LSH on Husky.

Web Administrator, Research and Information Hub (RIH), The Chinese University of Hong Kong (2016 – 2017) #

• Managed and maintained the RIH website infrastructure and content workflow for the department.
• Implemented site updates and automation scripts; coordinated with student groups and faculty for content publishing and events.
• Improved site reliability and reduced content publishing latency through simple CI scripts and optimized asset pipelines.

Summer Research Intern, National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) (Jul 2015 – Aug 2015) #

• Mentor: Dr. Ann Hsing-Yen
• Designed and implemented a MySQL database pipeline to retrieve and analyze malicious fast-flux domains.
• Authored an intern report: Development of Bad Domain Tracking System.
• Contributed to follow-on research that used BDTS to detect IP changes of malicious domains over time (Tsai et al., TANET 2018).

Published Conference Papers #

[C6] Ti-Chung Cheng*, Tiffany Wenting Li*, Karrie Karahalios, Hari Sundaram. “Budget, Cost, or Both? An Empirical Exploration of Mechanisms in Quadratic Surveys.” Proceedings of the ACM Collective Intelligence Conference (CI ‘25), 2025. PDF

[C5] Ti-Chung Cheng, Yutong Zhang*, Yi-Hung Chou*, Vinay Koshy, Tiffany Wenting Li, Karrie Karahalios, Hari Sundaram. “Organize, Then Vote: Exploring Cognitive Load in Quadratic Survey Interfaces.” Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘25), 2025. PDF

[C4] Ti-Chung Cheng*, Tiffany Wenting Li*, Yi-Hung Chou, Karrie Karahalios, Hari Sundaram. “I can show what I really like.”: Eliciting Preferences via Quadratic Voting. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW ‘21), 2021. PDF

[C3] Vinay Koshy, Joon Sung Park, Ti-Chung Cheng, Karrie Karahalios. “We Just Use What They Give Us: Understanding Passenger User Perspectives in Smart Homes.” Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘21), 2021. Best Paper Honorable Mention (Top 5%). PDF

[C2] Pingjing Yang, Ti-Chung Cheng*, Sajjadur Rahman*, Mangesh Bendre, Karrie Karahalios, Aditya Parameswaran. “Understanding Data Analysis Workflows on Spreadsheets: Roadblocks and Opportunities.” Workshop on Human-In-the-Loop Data Analytics (HILDA ‘20), 2020. PDF

[C1] Jinfeng Li, Xiao Yan, Jian Zhang, An Xu, James Cheng, Jie Liu, Kelvin K. W. Ng, Ti-Chung Cheng. “A General and Efficient Querying Method for Learning to Hash.” ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD ‘18), 2018. PDF

Technical Report #

[TR1] Ti-Chung Cheng, Carmen Badea, Christian Bird, Thomas Zimmermann, Robert DeLine, Nicole Forsgren, Denae Ford. “GEMS: Generative Expert Metric System through Iterative Prompt Priming.” Microsoft Research. Link

Research Posters #

[P2] Pranay Midha*, Ti-Chung Cheng*, Hari Sundaram, Karrie Karahalios. “Understanding Quadratic Survey Results: Interactive Visualization for Collective Preference Data.” Proceedings of the ACM Collective Intelligence Conference (CI ‘25), 2025.

[P1] Ti-Chung Cheng, Tiffany Wenting Li, Yi-Hung Chou, Karrie Karahalios, Hari Sundaram. “Quadratic Voting Better Elicits User Preferences Compared to Likert Surveys” (in Mandarin). Proceedings of the Taiwan CHI Conference (TAICHI ‘21), 2021

In Submission / In Preparation #

[W4] Ti-Chung Cheng, Hari Sundaram, Karrie Karahalios. “Small Group Deliberation with Quadratic Survey.” (In submission / in preparation)

[W3] Madeleine I. G. Daepp, Alejandro Cuevas, Robert Osazuwa Ness, Vickie Yu-Ping Wang, Bharat Kumar Nayak, Dibyendu Mishra, Ti-Chung Cheng, Shaily Desai, Joyojeet Pal. “Generative Propaganda.” (In submission / in preparation)

[W2] Ali Zaidi, Anna Karanika, Ti-Chung Cheng, Yi-Shyuan Chiang, Camille Cobb, Indranil Gupta, Karrie Karahalios. “Understanding Control Preferences in Smart Homes.” (In submission / in preparation)

[W1] Andrew Chen, David Zhou, Ti-Chung Cheng, Sarah Sterman. “Documenting and Communicating Design Processes.” (In submission / in preparation)

CS 598 HCI Research Methods @ UIUC #

• Term: FA 2023
• Instructor: Prof. Sarah Sterman, Prof. Camille Cobb, Prof. Eshwar Chandrasekharan
• Teaching Assistant for the course focused on Human-Computer Interaction research methodologies.
• Provided feedback, facilitated class activities, and assessed student assignments.

CS 411 Database Systems @ UIUC #

• Terms: FA 2020 SP 2021 FA 2021 SP 2022 SP 2023 FA 2024 SP 2025 FA 2025
• Instructor: Prof. Abdussalam Alawini
• Lead staffs and managed course assistants as the Lead TA for multiple semesters.
• Experience in large-scale (400+ student) flipped classroom activities.
• Navigated the course through COVID with experience in remote, hybrid, and in-person teaching.
• Designed assignments, activities, projects, and exams for the course.

CS 470 Social and Information Networks @ UIUC #

• Terms: FA 2020 FA 2022
• Instructor: Prof. Hari Sundaram
• Designed assignments and managed a small class of 35 students.
• Assisted in grading and operating a flipped classroom.

CS 598 DM Data Mining Capstone @ UIUC #

• Terms: SU 2025
• Instructor: Prof. Reza Farivar
• Managed MOOC logistics and hold weekly office hours.

CS 242 Programming Studio @ UIUC #

• Terms: FA 2018 FA 2019 SP 2020
• Instructor: Prof. Michael Woodley
• Head TA for two semesters, redesigning course materials and assignments.
• Lead discussion sessions and managed administrative matters for 200+ students.

CSCI 2040 Intro to Python @ CUHK #

• Terms: FA 2017
• Instructor: Prof. John C.S. Lui
• Designed final group project for the course of 110 students on financial data analytics using Python.
• Lead discussion sessions and managed administrative matters for 200+ students.

General Services #

Tech and Information Director, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Taiwan Alumni Association (Jan 2023 – Present) #

Columnist, Mandarin Daily News (Jan 2020 – Dec 2021) #

• The newspaper targets elementary and junior high students and has over 100K subscribers.
• Wrote a monthly column on technology and HCI.

Initiator and Coordinator, The Circle Group (Oct 2016 – Dec 2017) #

• Founded this platform to connect CS and non-CS students academically through sharing and technical workshops.
• Managed a team of 20 students working on The Circle Project and the official website for the Taiwanese Student Association.
• Created a freshmen guide that received 6,000+ views.

Information Officer, CUHK Taiwanese Student Association (Oct 2015 – Oct 2016) #

• Launched the organization’s online service and homepage.
• Assisted in technical setups for association activities.

Conference & Academic Services #

Invited Reviewer, ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TiiS), 2025 #

Invited Reviewer, Methodology, European Journal of Research Methods for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 2025 #

Reviewer, Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2023, 2024, 2025 #

Reviewer, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2024 #

Reviewer, Collective Intelligence (CI), 2025 #

Reviewer, Mensch und Computer (MuC), 2025 #

PURE (Promoting Undergraduate Research in Engineering) Mentor, UIUC (Sept 2023 – May 2024) #

MUSE Mentor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Aug 2019 – May 2023) #

Project Tyra — Fulbright Taiwan Mentor-Mentee Program (2023, 2024) #

Student Volunteer, CSCW 2021; CHI 2021 #

Book Reviewer, Python x Excel Data Processing Tips (Mandarin) — Oct 2022 (ISBN: 9786263490291) #

Volunteering #

Project Coordinator, Morningside (Oct 2013 – May 2014) #

• Volunteered in Nepal to understand and evaluate local needs and provide solutions. Report Journal
• Volunteering proposal approved by the university with funding support.
• Awarded the Reaching Out Award and Scholarship by the HKSAR.
• Awarded Taiwan Ministry of Education 2015 National iYouth Best Writing in Volunteering. News Coverage

I am proud to mentor and work with these talented students:

• Pranay Midha: UIUC BS MATH + CS ‘26, 2023–Present
• Janine Leong: UIUC BS CS + ECON ‘27, 2023
• Anupam Das: UIUC BS CS ‘27, 2023
• Yutong Zhang: UIUC BS CS ‘23, Now Graduate Student at Stanford, 2021–2023
• Tue Do: UIUC BS CS + Math ‘24, Now Graduate Student at UIUC, 2022–2023
• Ashay Parikh: UIUC BS CS ‘24, Now SWE at IMC Trading, 2022
• Yi-Hung Chou: CUHK BS CS ‘21, Now PhD Student at UCI, 2019–2021