Xinchen Yu

I am an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Arizona. I obtained my Ph.D. from the Department of Information Science at the University of North Texas.

My research lies at the intersection of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computational Social Science (CSS). The primary goal of my research is to enable computers to understand human behavior in conversations and promote better communication outcomes.

My research interests involve:

• [Behaviors] I develop robust AI models to identify individual conversational behaviors (e.g., hate speech, counterspeech, self-disclosure, social support).
• [Conversational Outcomes] I explore novel methods to measure and forecast collective behaviors as conversational outcomes (e.g., conversation incivility).
• [Behaviors⟹Conversational Outcomes] I investigate how individual behaviors, and their interactions with broader social contexts (e.g., community norms) or information environments (e.g., media bias), shape conversational outcomes.