Headshot of Alyssa Hwang

Alyssa Hwang

PhD Student (Started Fall 2020)

Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania

she/her/hers 🔈

GitHub Google Scholar LinkedIn CV Resume

Welcome!

I am a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Computer and Information Science (CIS) at the University of Pennsylvania, where I work with Professors Andrew Head and Chris Callison-Burch on Human-AI Interaction. I work on supporting fluid and informative conversations with large language models. I am particularly interested in helping users manage many details at once through voice, text, or AR/VR assistants.

Beyond research, I am a chair of the CIS Doctoral Association and the founder of our department's Mentorship Program. I also care a lot about outreach programs, like the Diversity and Equity Initiative in the Mind Sciences (DivE In Weekend). I have interned at Google and AWS, and my work has been featured by Tech Crunch, the Associated Press, and over 100 other US news outlets.

My first three years were supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. I received an MS in Computer and Information Studies from Penn while working on my PhD. I also hold a BS in Computer Science from Columbia University, where I conducted research at the Natural Language Text Processing Lab and wrote an undergraduate thesis with Professor Kathleen McKeown.

ahwang16 at seas dot upenn dot edu

Recent News

  • Feb 5, 2024: Looking forward to speaking at Women in Data Science @ Penn, Google, and Columbia in the next couple of months.
  • Dec 1, 2023: I will be in Singapore for EMNLP next week. Looking forward to meeting new people and presenting Kani at the open-source software workshop on Dec. 6 and attending the Salesforce networking dinner on Dec. 8!
  • Nov 16, 2023: My work on GPT-Vision has been featured by TechCrunch, Associated Press, Penn Today, and several other news outlets.
  • Nov 6, 2023: I'm in San Francisco for OpenAI DevDay 2023! Feel free to come chat with me about GPT-Vision, voice assistants, NLPxHCI/Human-AI Interaction, qualitative analysis, and more.