Zichen Chen

Hi! I am a forth-year PhD student in CS Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, working at the intersection of Explainable AI, Trust, Human-centered AI, Reinforcement Learning and Federated Learning. I’m incredibly lucky to be advised by Prof. Misha Sra, whose support has been invaluable in my research journey.

My research focuses on:

1. Making LLM/MLLM Decisions Transparent
2. Grounding Explanations in Real Model’s ‘Thinking’
3. Connecting MLLM with the Physical World
4. Building Human Trust with AI in High-Stakes Scenarios

I am open to collaborations and always excited to chat about research ideas. Please feel free to reach out to me at zichen_chen [at] ucsb.edu.

I’m honored to have received the Innovation Award from AAAI (2023). I was also a recipient of the UCSB CS Summer Fellowship, IJCAI Grant, AAAI Student Scholarship and UCSB CS Academic Excellence Fellowship. Beyond academia, I am a co-founder of DAOlivia, a female club in the bay area that supports female communities and female-founded brands.

I was a research associate at Joint NTU-WeBank Research Centre on Fintech, Singapore before. I was so lucky to work with Prof. Tan Ah-Hwee, Prof. Sinno Jialin Pan, and Prof. Han Yu. My previous research inlcudes reinforcement learning, recommender system, and transfer learning.

I am currently running a podcast exploring the journey from academic research to startup creation (and may even grow into a community) (subscribe here or X). I am especially passionate about encouraging women to take a seat at the table, helping to create more spaces for female voices and perspectives in tech and entrepreneurship. If you’re interested in being a guest or have any ideas, please don’t hesitate to reach out!