Yuxuan Chen

I am a Master of Science student in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) as of Fall 2024. My interests are at the intersections of Human-Computer Interaction and AI in education. I am a part of the Computing Education Research Area at UIUC, and my advisor is Mariana Silva. I will begin my PhD program in Fall 2026.

My current research interests center on enhancing learning experiences in introductory CS courses for engineering students. I am exploring the integration of LLMs to generate erroneous programming examples in CS1 context. In addition, I am designing learner-centered educational tools to support undergraduate conversational programmers.

I co-founded AristAI, a startup focused on building AI tools that help instructors manage large classes and improve accessibility. We designed an AI tutor trained on course materials to answer student questions more accurately and reduce instructor workload. We also built AI accessibility tools for documents and webpages to help instructors meet accessibility requirements at scale. I have since stepped down from AristAI to pursue my PhD.

In my spare time, I enjoy bouldering, playing table tennis, listening to music, hanging out with friends, or just sleeping. I’m a huge fan of Coldplay, Avicii, and Kygo.

Here is my CV.