Hi! I'm Jocelyn, a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab in
the Personal Robots Group, advised by
Professor Cynthia
Breazeal (MIT Media Lab) and co-advised by Professor Maarten Sap (CMU LTI). I graduated from
MIT in
2021 with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science alongside a minor in Economics and in 2023 with a
Master's in Media Arts and Sciences.
My research is broadly situated in the field of human-centered AI and aims to
advance computational
approaches, primarily using NLP and deep learning, for human-AI interactions that can promote
connection,
empathy, and
prosociality. I believe that socially interactive AI can be used as a tool
to better contextualize, understand, and express the human experience, both for personalization and
interpersonal dynamics. My work focuses on developing social-emotional reasoning
capabilities in
artificial agents, as well as understanding the mechanisms behind human communicative behaviors. I
use these insights to design new human-AI interactions with physically embodied or disembodied
social AIs that can improve connection and foster prosocial relationships between people.
Additionally, I am interested in evaluating the underlying capabilities, safety, and alignment of
socially and emotionally intelligent AIs and place a strong emphasis on assessing the impact of
interactive systems in the real world, across applications including emotional wellbeing, learning,
and communications & storytelling. I have published my work across both NLP +
HCI venues, including ACL, EMNLP, CHI, CSCW, and ACII. My work is generously supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and I am currently an MIT Teaching Development Fellow.
Previously, I worked at Apple AI/ML as a research intern in Human-Centered
Machine Intelligence. I've also worked at
Facebook
(Software Engineering Intern), Citadel (Software
Engineering Intern), and Affectiva (Data Science
Intern), where I've developed full stack applications, backend infrastructures, and machine learning
pipelines.
Aside from my work,
I like to illustrate comics, sketch characters, and write anything ranging from poems
to essays to novels. My awarded creative works often center around themes of racial identity, the
meaning of art, and the digital age.
Check out the rest of this site to learn more, and feel free to reach out!
Jocelyn Shen, Maarten Sap, Pedro Colon-Hernandez, Hae Won Park,
and Cynthia Breazeal
EMNLP 2024
paper
poster
slides
Ila Kumar*, Jocelyn Shen*, Craig Ferguson, and Rosalind Picard
CSCW 2025
paper
Jocelyn Shen, Maarten Sap, Pedro Colon-Hernandez, Hae Won Park,
and Cynthia Breazeal
EMNLP 2023
Oral Presentation
paper
poster
slides
talk
code + dataset
Jocelyn Shen, Yubin Kim, Mohit Hulse, Wazeer Zulfikar, Sharifa
Alghowinem, Cynthia Breazeal, and Hae Won Park
ACL 2024, Findings
paper
poster
slides
talk
dataset
request
Jocelyn Shen, Kathryn Jin*, Ann Zhang*, Cynthia Breazeal, and Hae Won
Park
CHI 2023, Late Breaking Work
paper
poster
Jocelyn Shen, Kimaya Lecamwasam, Hae Won Park, Cynthia Breazeal, and
Rosalind Picard.
ACII 2023, Late Breaking Report
paper
Jocelyn Shen, Ying Li, Javaria Hassan, Sharifa Alghowinem, Cynthia
Breazeal, Hae Won Park, and Rosalind Picard.
ACII 2023, Late Breaking Report
paper
Samuel Spaulding, Jocelyn Shen, Hae Won Park, and Cynthia Breazeal.
AAMAS 2021
paper
Daniella DiPaola*, Jocelyn Shen*, Rachelle Hu, Sharifa Alghowinem, and
Cynthia Breazeal.
IEEE CoG 2023
paper
Jocelyn Shen, Daniella DiPaola, Safinah Ali, Maarten Sap, Hae Won Park,
and Cynthia Breazeal.
JMIR Mental Health, 2024
paper
Samuel Spaulding, Jocelyn Shen, Hae Won Park, and Cynthia Breazeal.
Frontiers
in Robotics and AI 2021
paper
Alexander B. Brummer, Panagiotis Lymperopoulos, Jocelyn Shen, Elif Tekin,
Lisa P. Bentley, Vanessa Buzzard, Andrew Gray, Imma Oliveras, Brian J. Enquist and Van M.
Savage.
Journal of the Royal Society Interface 2021
* indicates equal contribution
My work at its core aims to value the rich and diverse experiences of every individual. I strongly believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion are crucial not only for scientific advancement but also for a cohesive society. I've served in the following positions throughout the past few years:
A story about racial identity and love in the digital age, told through a mixture of traditional
narrative and social media messages.
🏆 1st prize, MIT Boit Manuscript
Prize
Visual analysis essay of TIME's Welcome to America cover, discussing the relationship between visual
elements and U.S. immigration policies in parallel.
🏆 2nd prize, MIT List
Vera Prize for Writing on the Visual Arts
essay
Personal essay on lying for oneself versus lying for others. Explores themes of racial identity and
family.
essay
Personal work, short poem on pollution.
🏆 1st Place, Helen Creeley Poetry Prize
Personal work, short poem on acupuncture and the body.
🏆 1st Place, Helen Creeley Poetry Prize
Interviews with the Clinicial Machine Learning Group and Medical Vision Group at MIT on the
future
of AI in healthcare.
article
Interviews with researchers at the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research on the science of
mental health and the brain.
article
I began teaching myself digital drawing and painting in 2020, and have developed a particular interest in character design and visual storytelling. Below you will find some of my selected pieces as well as my Webtoon, Love in Favor, which I wrote and illustrated. For more artwork and sketches, look for my alias @bnbndog and check out my socials linked below.
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