Yulin Chen

Yulin has excelled as a student, researcher, mentor and leader. As a data analyst intern in the UC San Diego Family Medicine Department, he designed and administered surveys to analyze factors affecting the psychological well-being of police officers. At Scripps Institution of Oceanography, he built a “deep learning model for detecting mangrove ecosystem degradation.” In addition to his challenging double major, he is also minoring in cognitive science, and in yet another research project he “investigated how subtle variations in language can influence outputs from large language models like ChatGPT.” He has held additional research assistant positions in the Bilingualism in Context Lab and the Cognitive Media Lab.

He was an undergraduate tutor at the UCSD Halicioglu Institute. He is active in Eta Kappa Nu, an honor society for engineering students, where he serves as chair of the Data Science Department. In this role he leads technical workshops and does peer tutoring. Yulin attends Earl Warren College and was elected to their honors society.

Yulin knows that education is the key to a better life for him and his family. He came to the U.S. from China when he was just a young teenager, but shortly thereafter his father returned to China. These challenges have taught him to be resilient and determined to pursue his goals.

There is a strong social and ethical component to Yulin’s interest in data science, artificial intelligence and language. He hopes to build “tools that improve environmental sustainability, public health and human communications.” He wants his future career “to be defined not only by innovation, but by purpose.” Yulin hopes to attend graduate school, but already his research experience has deepened his awareness of the “ethical implications of artificial intelligence.”  His long-term goal is to develop AI tools that are both responsible and useful to society.