Julia Hsin-Ping Hsu

Julia Hsin-Ping Hsu

Ph.D. candidate in Information Technology

Community Informatics Lab

George Mason University

Biography

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Information Technology with a concentration in Information Sciences and Technology at the School of Computing, George Mason University. My research focuses on computational social science and information sciences, where I apply data-driven and computational methods to study social phenomena and improve information access. My broader interests include artificial intelligence for social good, community informatics, and civic technology.

I am currently a Graduate Research Assistant at the Community Informatics Lab, where I collaborate on projects that leverage computational approaches to address societal challenges.

Download my CV.

Interests

  • Computational social sciences
  • ML/ AI for social good
  • Community informatics
  • Civic technology
  • Information inequality
  • Software Development

Education

  • PhD in Information Technology, 2026

    George Mason University, VA, USA

  • MS in Computer Science, 2020

    George Mason University, VA, USA

  • BS in Computer Science, 2017

    University of Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan

  • Exchange Program in Computer Science with Study Abroad Scholarship, 2016

    Southwestern Oklahoma State University, OK, USA

Recent Publications

From Open‑Ended Text to Taxonomy: An LLM‑based Framework for Information Sources for Disability Services

People with disabilities (PWD) and their family members often find it difficult to find information about available services. One of …
Project Paper
From Open‑Ended Text to Taxonomy: An LLM‑based Framework for Information Sources for Disability Services

Leveling Socioeconomic Disparities: The Role of Service Availability in School Dropout Rates

Purpose: Adolescent school dropout remains a major concern in the United States, accounting for 5.3% of the entire high school students …
Paper
Leveling Socioeconomic Disparities: The Role of Service Availability in School Dropout Rates

An Evaluation of GPT-4V for Transcribing the Urban Renewal Hand-Written Collection

In November 2023, OpenAI released GPT- 4V(ision), which includes Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities. Given that much of …
Paper

Two-sided Cultural Niches: Topic Overlap, Geospatial Correlation, and Local Group Activities on Event-based Social Networks

As event-based social networks (EBSNs) such as Meetup.com and Facebook Events gain popularity in managing local events like farmers' …
Paper
Two-sided Cultural Niches: Topic Overlap, Geospatial Correlation, and Local Group Activities on Event-based Social Networks

Towards an Expectation-Oriented Model of Public Service Quality: A Preliminary Study of NYC 311

The 311 system has been deployed in many U.S. cities to manage non-emergency civic issues such as noise and illegal parking. To assess …
Paper
Towards an Expectation-Oriented Model of Public Service Quality: A Preliminary Study of NYC 311

Participation in Research Projects

.js-id-Funded
All Funded Machine Learning Community Data Analytics Computational Modeling Social Media Data Analytics Civic Technology Human-AI Collaboration Social Determinants of Health

Mapping Information Ecology: Understanding the Fragmentation of Disability Service Information

I am the co-author of the grant proposal, and participate in this project as a graduate research assistant under Dr. Myeong Lee’s supervision.
Project description

Exploring How Convergence Methods Foster Shared Accountability to Reveal, Map, and Mitigate the Sources and Dynamics of Bias across Social Service Provisioning Systems

I participate in this project as a graduate research assistant under Dr. Myeong Lee’s supervision.
Project description

AI for AI: Toward Community-level Human-AI Collaborations in Local Meetups

I participated in this project under Dr. Myeong Lee’s supervision. I generated various types of features from Meetup data and built ML models to predict group activity level and event participation.
Project description

Making Information Deserts Visible: Computational Models, Disparities in Civic Technology Use, and Urban Decision Making

I participated in this project under Dr. Myeong Lee’s supervision. I built ML models to identify government employees and led the web visualization development team.
Project description Map visualization system
Making Information Deserts Visible: Computational Models, Disparities in Civic Technology Use, and Urban Decision Making

Benchmarking Local Event Data Disambiguation: Data Fragmentation across Event-based Social Networks

Benchmarking Local Event Data Disambiguation: Data Fragmentation across Event-based Social Networks

Measure Cultural Distance by Analyzing Temporal Patterns of Food and Drink Preferences in YELP

The proposed project examines the food and drink culture in 6 different cities from Northern America and draws neighborhood map which clearly demarcates the boundary based on the temporal patterns of food and drink preferences. Each region in the map would subtly convey to us the cultural preferences which has resulted in this classification
Code

Academic Experience

 
 
 
 
 

COVES Fellow at the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia

Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine

May 2024 – Aug 2024 Virginia, USA
  • Ethics-based analysis of AI use in higher education
 
 
 
 
 

Graduate Research Assistant

Dept. of Information Sciences & Technology
George Mason University

Nov 2019 – Present Virginia, USA
  • ML/ AI for social good
  • ML algorithm implementation
  • Computational community data analytics
  • Map-based visualization system development
 
 
 
 
 

Teaching Assistant

Dept. of Computer Science
University of Taipei

Feb 2017 – Jun 2017 Taipei, Taiwan
  • Provided feedback and instructions to 50 students on Java and Python programming assignments
  • Prepared teaching materials and instructional equipment for Java and Python classes

Technical Skills

  • Programming Languages/ Databases:

    • Python, C, C++, Java, SQL, MongoDB, Spark, MATLAB, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, VHDL, Assembly Language

  • Frameworks/ Other:

    • Django, Angular, Jenkins, Amazon Web Services, RESTful Web Service, React, Rancher, Docker, Android Studio, Google Cloud, Git

Awards & Honors

3rd-Place Prize at the Innovation Week Poster Competition

College of Engineering and Computing, George Mason University Feb 2024

GRA award

Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnership, George Mason University Jan 2023
GRA award from GMU’s Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnership

University International Travel Grant

Associate Provost for Graduate Education, George Mason University Oct 2022
Reveived university international travel grant

Winner of Wells Fargo Campus Analytics Challenge – NLP and Topic Modeling 2020

Wells Fargo Jan 2020
Implemented a topic modeling algorithm beyond common approach (LDA)

Outstanding Achievement Award

Taipei City Council Jun 2017
Outstanding Achievement Award by Taipei City Council for 4 academic years

High Scholar Achievement Award

University of Taipei Jun 2017
University of Taipei High Scholar Achievement Award for 4 consecutive years

Social Network Design Competition Award

University of Taipei Dec 2016
Social Network Design Competition Award

First Oklahoma High Performance Computing Competition

The University of Tulsa Apr 2015
First Oklahoma High Performance Computing Competition Honorable Mention

Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium Participant

University of Oklahoma Apr 2015
Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium Participant

Winner of Software Creative Design Competition

University of Taipei Sep 2014
Winner of the University of Taipei Software Creative Design Competition

Professional Service

Student Volunteer

RecSys 2022 Sep 2022

Late-Breaking Reviewer

SocInfo 2022 Sep 2022

Contact

  • hhsu2@gmu.edu
  • 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030
  • Nguyen Engineering Building