Dr. Lujie Karen Chen

Dr. Lujie Karen Chen

Assistant Professor · Tenure-Track

Department of Information Systems

College of Engineering and Information Technology

She/Her/Hers/Herself

About

Lujie Karen Chen is an Assistant Professor with Information Systems Department. She works at the interaction of data science/statistics, machine learning, AI, and applications in healthcare and education. She is interested in many aspects of the data-driven and human-centered approaches to optimize human flourishing for patients and students, as well as service providers such as healthcare workers and teachers. She holds degrees in Information Systems (MISM, Ph.D.) and Statistics (M.S.), all from Carnegie Mellon University. During her Ph.D. career, she was an Interdisciplinary Educational Research Fellow funded by the US Department of Education.

Research interests

I am an applied data science and machine learning researcher interested in solving real-world problems using data-driven, human-centric and inclusive approaches. I am especially interested in domains where human flourishing plays a central role, such as healthcare and education. I am interested in not only solutions that can directly improve patients or students’ outcomes, but also those that could leverage machine intelligence to support human service providers (such as healthcare workers, teachers, social workers, or parents) by augmenting their cognitive functions to improve job performance and maximize their own wellbeing. To this end, I often rely on fine-grained data describing the complex human physiological and psychological processes and interaction in the naturalistic environment.

Teaching interests

Data science, Data mining, Decision Support Systems

Education

  • Ph D, Information Systems — Carnegie Mellon University (2020)
    Augmenting Human Perceptual and Reasoning Capabilities: From Healthcare to Education
  • MS, Statistics — Carnegie Mellon University (2012)
  • MS, Information Systems — Carnegie Mellon University (2004)
  • BS, International Business & Computer Science — Shanghai Jiaotong University (1998)

Publications

  • Developing Problem-Solving Competency in Data Science: Exploring A Case-Based Approach 2025 Provost's Teaching & Learning Symposium Lujie Chen, Maryam A Alomair, Muhammad Ali Yousuf, Shimei Pan
  • Engaging K-12 Learners in Data Annotation for AI Climate Models 2025 ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Michael MacFerrin, Edward Boyda, Kimberly Young, Josephine M Namayanja, Aneesh Subramanian, Mohamed Mokbel, Lujie Karen Chen, Vandana P Janeja
  • Affect, Support and Personal Factors: Multimodal Causal Models of One-on-one Coaching Journal of Educational Data Mining Lujie K Chen, Joseph Ramsey, Artur Dubrawski

Presentations

  • Engaging K-12 Learners in Data Annotation for AI Climate Models 2025 The Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE TS) · ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) · Poster Michael MacFerrin (Author), Edward Boyda (Author), Kimberly Young (Author), Josephine M Namayanja (Author & Presenter), Aneesh Subramanian (Author), Mohamed F Mokbel (Author), Lujie Karen Chen (Author), Vandana P Janeja (Author)
  • Affect, Support and Personal Factors: Multimodal Causal Models of One-on-one Coaching 2021 Fourteenth International Conference on Educational Data Mining · Paper Lujie Karen Chen (Author & Presenter), Joseph Ramsey (Author), Artur Dubrawski (Author)
  • Student Postures Analysis in Real Classrooms: Building Interpretable Descriptors for Student Posture Analysis in a Physical Classroom 2021 Fourteenth International Conference on Educational Data Mining · Poster Lujie Karen Chen (Author & Presenter), David Gerritsen (Author)
  • Do we need to go Deep? Knowledge Tracing with Big Data 2021 AAAI/AI in Education Workshop · Paper Varun Mandalapu (Author & Presenter), Jiaqi Gong (Author), Lujie Karen Chen (Author)

Grants and Contracts

  • Caselet+: Inclusive Data Science Problem Solving Skills Building at Scale 2021 Academic Data Science Alliance/Hopewell Fund · Grant Lujie Chen (Principal), Shimei Pan (Co-Principal)
  • Collaborative Research: NRI: FUNstration Bot: a Personal Coach for Perseverance in Mathematical Problem-Solving (2022) NSF · Sponsored Research · Not Funded Lujie Chen (Principal), Foad Hamidi (Co-Principal), Patricia Young (Co-Principal)

Research in Progress

  • Towards Explainable and Safe Conversational Agents for Mental Health: A Survey 2022 Scholarly · On-Going Surjodeep Sarkar, Manas Gaur, Lujie Chen, Muskan Garg, Biplav Srivastava, Bhaktee Dongaonkar

Courses Taught

  • Foundations of Data Science IS 296 · Fall 2025
  • Foundations of Data Science IS 296 · Spring 2025
  • Decision Support Systems IS 425 · Fall 2020