Li Chen

Professor Li Chen is a full Professor and Associate Head (Research) in the Department of Computer Science at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), with an affiliate appointment at the Academy of Wellness and Human Development. She leads the Positive Intelligence Lab, focusing on intelligent technologies for human well-being. Her research spans conversational AI, explainable AI, recommender systems, and human-computer interaction.

Education:

• PhD in Computer Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland (Nominee for Best PhD Thesis Award)
• Master in Computer Software and Theory, Peking University, China
• Bachelor in Computer Science, Peking University, China

Her research interests revolve around personalized conversational and explainable AI, with applications in entertainment, education, e-commerce, and mental well-being. She has published over 150 papers in top venues including ACM TOIS, IJHCS, CHI, SIGIR, AAAI, RecSys, and UMAP. Her work has been recognized with awards such as the RecSys Best Student Paper Award (2024), CHI Honourable Mention (2022), and multiple best paper awards at UMAP and UMUAI.

The most recent publications reflect a strong trend toward fair, explainable, and user-centric recommender systems, with increasing integration of large language models, mental health applications, and conversational agents. Her research emphasizes user feedback, negative sampling techniques, and evaluation frameworks grounded in real user behavior.

Scientific Awards & Recognition:

• President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Teaching (Individual), HKBU (2024/25)
• President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Research Supervision (2022/23)
• World’s Top 2% Most-Cited Scientists, Stanford University (2021–2024)
• ACM Senior Member (2015)
• RecSys’24 Best Student Paper Award
• CHI’22 Honourable Mention Award
• UMAP’20 Best Student Paper Award
• UMUAI 2018 Best Paper Award
• THE Awards Asia 2021 Excellence and Innovation in the Arts (Co-I)

Professor Chen is actively involved in mentoring PhD and Master’s students such as Wanling Cai and Yuhan Zhao, who have co-authored award-winning papers. She has secured research funding through grants like the HKBU IRCMS Project. Her editorial leadership includes serving as Co-Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems (TORS), Associate Editor for ACM TiiS, and Editorial Board Member for UMUAI. She has chaired major conferences including ACM RecSys’23 (General Co-Chair), RecSys’20 (Program Co-Chair), and UMAP’18 (Program Co-Chair).

She leads the Positive Intelligence Lab, which conducts interdisciplinary research on AI for well-being. The lab has developed datasets like the Intent Annotation of Recommendation Dialogue (IARD) and focuses on user-centric AI design, mental health chatbots, and personalized recommendation interfaces.