鄭棣中

我現為伊利諾大學香檳分校（UIUC）電腦科學博士候選人，由 Prof. Karrie Karahalios 與 Prof. Hari Sundaram 共同指導，為 Social Spaces group 與 Crowd Dynamics Lab的實驗室成員。

我目前的研究專注於「平方問卷」這套新型喜好量測工具，幫助個體在集體決策中清楚表達自己想法。這也是我更廣泛研究興趣的一環：人們如何透過計算工具做出更好的集體決策？我的研究涵蓋人機互動（HCI）與計算機輔助協作科學（CSCW），研究主題包括：集體決策機制設計（假訊息如何影響社會選擇；平方問卷）、資料視覺化（平方問卷；COVID 政策視覺化）、以及人與 AI 的互動（大型語言模型的逐步提示設計；智慧居家；智慧編輯）。

在攻讀碩士期間，我曾與 Prof. Aditya Parameswaran 及 Karahalios 教授合作 Dataspread 專案，設計介於試算表與資料庫之間的混合系統。

我於香港中文大學計算機系取得學士學位，曾於 Husky Team 擔任大學部研究生，由 Prof. James Cheng 指導，進行分散式機器學習與近鄰查詢演算法相關研究。我的導師為 Prof. John C.S. Lui。

在學術之外，我也投入軟體系統開發與教學。我曾擔任 UIUC 多門課程的教學助理，課程規模從數十人到數百人不等，涵蓋實體、線上與混成授課方式，包含入門課、進階課、研究所課程與 MOOC，並獲得多項教學獎項肯定。我也創立 Here@Illinois，這是一套雲端點名系統，至今已被數千名學生與數百名教職員使用。

在業界方面，我曾於 微軟研究院 (Microsoft Research) 擔任研究實習生，開發 DevOps 工具與進行假訊息擴散效應研究，也曾在 Salesforce 擔任軟體工程實習生，以及於 KKBOX 擔任機器學習實習生。我擅長 Python、TypeScript 與全端網頁開發，也經常指導學生進行 HCI、CSCW 與軟體工程相關專題。

你可以從這裡下載我最新的 履歷，內容通常比我的網頁還要即時更新。

🎓 博士（Computer Science），伊利諾大學香檳分校（預計 2026/05） #

• 論文提案：“Quadratic Surveys: Empirical Research on using Quadratic Voting Mechanism as a Preference Elicitation Tool”

🎓 理學碩士（Computer Science），伊利諾大學香檳分校（2018–2020） #

• 碩士論文：“Comparing Quadratic Voting and Likert Surveys”

🎓 理學士（Computer Science），副修商業經濟學，香港中文大學（2013–2017） #

• 畢業專題：“Efficient Nearest Neighbors Search in Distributed Manner.”

🎓 交換與短期訪問 #

• 交換學生，Computer Science，伊利諾大學香檳分校（2015）
• 短期訪問學生，Whitman College（2016）
• 短期訪問學生，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 人機互動研究方法 @ UIUC #

• 學期： FA 2023
• 授課教師： Prof. Sarah Sterman、Prof. Camille Cobb、Prof. Eshwar Chandrasekharan
• 擔任助教協助學生理解應用人機互動領域的不同研究方法。
• 提供作業回饋、帶領課堂活動，並批改學生作業。

CS 411 Database Systems @ UIUC #

• 學期： FA 2020 SP 2021 FA 2021 SP 2022 SP 2023 FA 2024 SP 2025
• 授課教師： Prof. Abdussalam Alawini
• 擔任多個學期的首席助教，負責管理課程助教。
• 具備 400+ 人大班翻轉教室經驗。
• 在 COVID 期間，具備遠程、混合和面對面教學的經驗。
• 設計批改及評量學生作業、課堂小組活動、學期專題與考試。

CS 470 Social and Information Networks @ UIUC #

• 學期： FA 2020 FA 2022
• 授課教師： Prof. Hari Sundaram
• 設計作業並管理 35 人的小班。
• 協助評分並經營翻轉教室。

CS 598 資料探勘專題 @ UIUC #

• 學期： SU 2025
• 授課教師： Prof. Reza Farivar
• 負責管理 MOOC 行政並負責每周的助教時間回應學生疑問。

CS 242 程式設計工作坊 @ UIUC #

• 學期： FA 2018 FA 2019 SP 2020
• 授課教師： Prof. Michael Woodley
• 擔任兩個學期的首席助教，重新設計課程材料和作業。
• 帶領討論課並管理 200+ 學生。

CSCI 2040 Python 入門 @ CUHK #

• 學期： FA 2017
• 授課教師： Prof. John C.S. Lui
• 為 110 名學生設計以金融資料分析為題的期末專案。
• 帶領討論課並管理 200+ 學生。

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

我很榮幸能指導並與這些優秀的學生合作：

• 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