PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Serina Chang

Serina Chang is an assistant professor at UC Berkeley who develops AI models of human behavior and studies human–AI interaction and public health. She earned a computer science BA at Columbia in 2019 and a computer science PhD at Stanford in 2024, then worked in Microsoft Research’s Computational Social Science group. Her work included a 2020 model of COVID-19 spread built from mobility data and a 2024 study that used search logs to examine vaccine seeking and concerns. In 2025, she coauthored ChatBench to evaluate human–AI conversations and won the ACM SIGKDD Dissertation Award. She coauthored PARETO in 2026 to measure approval of AI responses across groups with opposing political views.

Works
46
Citations
1,968
h-index
10

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 28 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2017–2019

    Language research at Columbia

    At Columbia, she publishes work on automatic text summarization in 2017 under the guidance of Kathy McKeown, followed by a 2018 paper on detecting emotion in social media posts by gang-involved youth in Chicago. She earns a BA in computer science at Columbia University in 2019.

  2. 2020

    Modelling COVID-19 spread

    In 2020, Chang helps develop a model of COVID-19 spread using anonymous cellphone location data, demographic information and estimates of disease transmission. The team traces the movements of 98 million people in ten US metropolitan areas to study infection risks and reopening policies.

  3. 2023

    Chairing health research meetings

    In 2023, she serves as program chair of Machine Learning for Health and co-chairs the Data Science for Social Good Workshop at KDD.

  4. 2024

    A doctorate at Stanford

    She completes her PhD in computer science at Stanford University in 2024, advised by Jure Leskovec and Johan Ugander.

  5. August 2024

    Measuring vaccine seeking

    With Adam Fourney and Eric Horvitz, she publishes Measuring Vaccination Coverage and Concerns of Vaccine Holdouts from Web Search Logs in August 2024. The team uses anonymized Bing logs and machine learning to detect vaccine seeking, estimate rates at ZIP code level and examine the concerns of people who delay vaccination.

  6. By 2025

    Postdoctoral research at Microsoft

    By 2025, she works as a postdoctoral researcher in the Computational Social Science group at Microsoft Research.

  7. July 2025

    ChatBench evaluates human–AI conversations

    In July 2025, she coauthors ChatBench with Ashton Anderson and Jake M. Hofman. The dataset converts benchmark questions into human–AI conversations and contains 7,336 conversations covering 396 questions and two language models.

  8. August 2025

    The SIGKDD Dissertation Award

    In August 2025, she wins the ACM SIGKDD Dissertation Award for Computational Methods for Human Networks and High-Stakes Decisions.

  9. May 2026

    PARETO measures political neutrality

    In May 2026, she coauthors Political Neutrality as Balanced Approval, introducing the PARETO dataset with 7,434 participants and 208,152 evaluations of AI responses. The work tests a definition of neutrality that seeks high, balanced approval from groups with opposing views on controversial issues.

  10. Since 2025

    Assistant professor at Berkeley

    She joins UC Berkeley in July 2025 as an assistant professor with joint appointments in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and Computational Precision Health. As of October 2026, she develops AI models of human behavior and studies human–AI interaction and public health, as part of the Berkeley AI Research Lab and Center for Human-Compatible AI.

Career

  1. Since 2025University of California, BerkeleyAssistant professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and Computational Precision Health
  2. NowUniversity of California, BerkeleyMember, Berkeley AI Research Lab
  3. NowUniversity of California, BerkeleyMember, Center for Human-Compatible AI
  4. Microsoft ResearchPostdoctoral researcher, Computational Social Science group

Education

  1. 2024Stanford UniversityPhD in computer science
  2. 2019Columbia UniversityBA in computer science

From the biography.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Serina Chang yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. CS Undergraduate Students Recognized By The Computing Research Association | Department of Computer Science, Columbia University cs.columbia.edu. Checked 28 October 2026.
  2. Serina Chang | EECS at UC Berkeley www2.eecs.berkeley.edu. Checked 28 October 2026.
  3. Researchers create a computer model to predict how COVID-19 spreads | Stanford University School of Engineering engineering.stanford.edu. Checked 28 October 2026.
  4. 2023 Rising Stars | DSI datascience.uchicago.edu. Checked 28 October 2026.
  5. Serina Chang serinachang5.github.io. Checked 28 October 2026.
  6. Measuring vaccination coverage and concerns of vaccine holdouts from web search logs | Nature Communications nature.com. Checked 28 October 2026.
  7. SIGKDD Awards : 2025 SIGKDD Dissertation Award Winners kdd.org. Checked 28 October 2026.
  8. ChatBench: From Static Benchmarks to Human-AI Evaluation - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 28 October 2026.
  9. Serina Chang wins ACM KDD Dissertation Award - EECS at Berkeley eecs.berkeley.edu. Checked 28 October 2026.
  10. Political Neutrality as Balanced Approval: A Large-Scale Human Evaluation of AI Responses arxiv.org. Checked 28 October 2026.