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.

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🎓 PhD in Computer Science, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Present) #

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

🎓 Master of Science in Computer Science, The University of Illinois at 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, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2015)
• Short-term Exchange Visiting Student, Whitman College, Princeton University (2016)

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

• Mentors: Madeleine Daepp, [Robert Ness](Robert Ness).
• Investigated empirically the impact of Large Language Models on high-stakes decision-making events through misinformation.
• Conducted time series, linguistic, and econometric analyses of 150K+ articles to substantiate claims about generative propaganda’s impact.
• Provided in-depth cultural and local insights, assuring accurate and nuanced discussion of regional issues in meetings and publications.

Research Intern, Software Analysis & Intelligence (SAINTES) Group, Microsoft Research (May 2023 - Aug 2023) #

• Mentors: Denae Ford Robinson, Nicole Forsgren, Carmen Badea, Christian Bird, Tom Zimmermann, Rob DeLine.
• Designed and built a prototype aimed to enhance software development operations (DevOps) and experiences using GitHub data.
• Constructed a complex Python-based LLM (Large-language Model)-powered team matching tool orchestrated using OpenAI API, Guidance, FLAML, and MySQL.
• Spearheaded metrics and proxies to understand and support team-matching decision processes.
• Outlined a two-stage within-subject qualitative study to explore expert users’ perceptions of LLM-based team matching processes.

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

• Led 3 human-computer interaction research projects in human-data interaction, individual preference elicitation, and smart home privacy.
• Designed, prototyped, and built an preference elicitation system using Quadratic Voting mechanisms with Nest.js, MongoDB, and Angular.
• Evaluated multiple interactive systems using interviews, surveys, questionnaires, and in-lab behavioral experiments.
• Analyzed experiment data using qualitative and quantitative methods, including open coding, thematic analysis, and bayesian analysis.
• Supported 2 human-computer interaction research projects in smart home user power dynamics and spreadsheet data analysis workflows.

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

• See Teaching for more details.

Software Engineer Intern, Salesforce (May 2020 - Aug 2020) #

• Developed VSCode Plugin for Salesforce developers to reduce XML development time by 2x using TypeScript.
• Contributed to Open Source RedHat XML VSCode extension (#292) and Salesforce VS Code extension (#2726)

Software Engineer Intern, Salesforce (May 2019 - Aug 2019) #

• Built pipelines and designed 3 dashboards for front-end cache monitoring using Java, Grafana, and Splunk to visualize daily logs on a billion scale.
• Optimized dashboard queries by 10x loc for better readability and maintainability.

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

• Mentor: Dr. Yian Chen
• Researched and implemented a natural language processing pipeline for mandarin name-entity recognition with 90%+ accuracy.
• Designed and built a pattern-based relation extraction pipeline for cross-language music content using 3B+ music data.

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, RIH, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (2016 - 2017) #

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

• Mentor: Dr.Ann, Hsing-Yen
• Designed and implemented MySQL database pipeline to retrieve and analyze malicious fast-flux domains.
• Intern report: Development of Bad Domain Tracking System
• Contributed to Tsai et al. Using BDTS to detect IP changes of malicious domains over time. 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.

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
• 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 guide for incoming freshmen with over 6000+ views.

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

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

Conference & Academic Services #

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

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

Reviewer, Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2023, 2024 #

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

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

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

Reviewer, Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2023 (Oct 2022) #

Student Volunteer, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing, CSCW 2021 (Nov 2022, Oct 2021) #

Student Volunteer, Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2021 (May 2021) #

Volunteering #

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

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

I am extremely 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