Honglin (虹霖) Bao
Innovation - AI - Computing and Society
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Doctoral student in data science, University of Chicago
Contact: honglinbao at uchicago dot edu
I am a data science doctoral student in the UChicago Knowledge Lab working with James A. Evans.
I study AI for Innovation — the potential of agentic AI to automate human exploration, AI's role as a driver of innovation, and the governance of AI for better science and society. I am also interested in the social processes of innovation broadly — how new ideas emerge and spread, and how socio-technical institutions shape the evaluation process. I develop and use toolkits spanning network analysis, simulation models, causal inference, and human-in-the-loop AI. My papers appear in leading peer-reviewed journals across general science, network science, and social sciences, including Nature Communications, Quantitative Science Studies, as well as in top interdisciplinary computing conferences such as WWW/TheWebConf.
I have backgrounds in mathematics, computer science, social science, and evolutionary biology. Before Chicago I graduated from Michigan State and was a research associate at Harvard Business School. I widely collaborate with social computing researchers outside Chicago. Drop me an email if you are interested in working together!
Recent News (in 2025)
[05-2025] One paper featured in ACM showcases.
[05-2025] Two new preprints: automatically growing LLM's expertise in technology judgment; LLMs surface the unwritten rules in scientific judgment.
[04-2025] One work on automating scientific judgment accepted as an oral presentation at ICSSI 2025.
[03-2025] One new paper on the diffusion of AI technology among global scientists accepted by Quantitative Science Studies.
[01-2025] One new paper on the diffusion of computational social science accepted by WWW.