Kai Chen (陈凯)

Education

• Aug. 2023 - Present
  Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Southern California
  Advisor: Prof. Jonathan May; Prof. Kristina Lerman
  
• Aug. 2020 - Dec. 2022
  M.S. in Computer Science, University of Southern California
  
• Sep. 2016 - Jun. 2020
  B.E. in Software Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology

Publications & Preprints

(*: equal contribution)

• STEER-BENCH: A Benchmark for Evaluating the Steerability of Large Language Models
  Kai Chen, Zihao He, Taiwei Shi, Kristina Lerman
  To appear at EMNLP 2025
  
• How Susceptible are Large Language Models to Ideological Manipulation?
  Kai Chen, Zihao He, Jun Yan, Taiwei Shi, Kristina Lerman
  SeT LLM @ ICLR 2024 (Best Paper Runner-up)
  EMNLP 2024
  
• Safer-instruct: Aligning language models with automated preference data
  Taiwei Shi, Kai Chen, Jieyu Zhao
  NAACL 2024
  
• IsamasRed: A Public Dataset Tracking Reddit Discussions on Israel-Hamas Conflict
  Kai Chen, Zihao He, Keith Burghardt, Jingxin Zhang, Kristina Lerman
  ICWSM 2024
  
• Large Language Models Reveal Information Operation Goals, Tactics, and Narrative Frames
  Keith Burghardt, Kai Chen, Kristina Lerman
  CySoc @ ICWSM 2024
  
• Anger Breeds Controversy: Analyzing Controversy and Emotions on Reddit
  Kai Chen, Zihao He, Rong-Ching Chang, Jonathan May, Kristina Lerman
  SBP-BRiMS 2023
  

Teaching

• Fall 2025, CSCI 360 Artificial Intelligence: Principles and Foundations, Instructor: Mohammad Reza Rajati

• Fall 2024, CSCI 596 Scientific Computing and Visualization, Instructor: Aiichiro Nakano

Professional Service

Reviewer:
ACL Rolling Review (2024-2025), ICWSM (2024-2025), COLING (2024)

Miscellany