About Me

Hi! I am a fifth year PhD candidate in Department of Computer Science, Stanford University (with a PhD minor in management science and engineering), advised by Prof. Dan McFarland and Prof. Dan Jurafsky. In previous quarters, I rotated with Prof. Michael Bernstein and Prof. Jure Leskovec, and collaborated with Prof. Melissa Valentine and Prof. Julien Clement. I am affiliated with Stanford NLP group and Stanford HCI group.

I received my bachelor degree (with honors) from Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University in 2018. I studied as an exchange student in A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park in Fall 2016.

I have been a research assistant in Future Communications and Internet Lab, Tsinghua University, advised by Prof. Yong Li and Prof. Vassilis Kostakos (University of Melbourne) since 2015. In Fall 2016, I was fortunate enough to work under the supervision of Distinguished University Professor Prof. Hanan Samet at University of Maryland. In Summer 2017, I was a visiting student and research assistant at Human Dynamics Group, MIT Media Lab, advised by Prof. Alex 'Sandy' Pentland and Prof. Xiaowen Dong.

My research interests broadly lie in computational social science, social computing, and data science.

Education

Sep. 2018 - Jun. 2024 (Expected), Department of Computer Science, Stanford University,

Doctor of Philosophy. Major in Computer Science, Minor in Management Science & Engineering.

Aug. 2014 - Jul. 2018, Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University,

Bachelor of Engineering (with honors).

Aug. 2016 - Dec. 2016, A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park,

Exchange Student.

Jun. 2017 - Sep. 2017, Human Dynamics Group, Media Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

Visiting Student and Research Assistant.

Industrial Experience

Jun. 2022 - Dec. 2022 , Semantic Scholar/AllenNLP, Allen Institute for Artifical Intelligence

Research Intern.

Hosts: Lucy Lu Wang, Kyle Lo, Jesse Dodge

Jun. 2020 - Sep. 2020, Mar. 2022 - Jun. 2022, E & D Office of Applied Research, Microsoft

Research Intern.

Hosts: Longqi Yang, CJ Lee, Shamsi Iqbal, Mary Czerwinski.

Brent Hecht, Jaime Teevan

Jun. 2021 - Sep. 2021, computational social science group, Microsoft Research

Research Intern.

Hosts: Jake Hofman, Dan Goldstein.

Jul. 2018 - Sep. 2018, Map Service, Mobile Internet Group, Tencent Inc

Research Intern.

Publications

• H. Cao, Y. Lu, Y. Deng, D. McFarland, M. Bernstein, Breaking Out of the Ivory Tower: A Large-scale Analysis of Patent Citations to HCI Research, in CHI 2023. Best Paper Award [pdf]

• M. Cheng, D. Smith, X. Ren, H. Cao, S. Smith, D. McFarland, How New Ideas Diffuse in Science, in American Sociological Review. [pdf]

• M. Lee, M. Srivastava, A. Hardy, J. Thickstun, E. Durmus, A. Paranjape, I. Gerard-Ursin, X. Li, F. Ladhak, F. Rong, R. Wang, M. Kwon, J. Park, H. Cao, T. Lee, R. Bommasani, M. Bernstein, P. Liang, Evaluating Human-Language Model Interaction, Preprint. [pdf]

• Z. Chen, J. Piao, X. Lan, H. Cao, C. Gao, Z. Lu, Y. Li, Practitioners Versus Users: A Value-Sensitive Evaluation of Current Industrial Recommender System Design, in CSCW 2022. [pdf]

• Z. Chen*, H. Cao*, X. Lan, Z. Lu, Y. Li, Beyond Virtual Bazaar: How Social Commerce Promotes Inclusivity for the Traditionally Underserved Community in Chinese Developing Regions, in CHI 2022. [pdf]

  [新智元] [集智]

• H. Cao, C. Lee, S. Iqbal, M. Czerwinski, P. Wong, S. Rintel, B. Hecht, J. Teevan, L. Yang, Large Scale Analysis of Multitasking Behavior During Remote Meetings, in CHI 2021. Honorable Mention Award [pdf][doi][presentation] [Wired] [Forbes-1] [Forbes-2] [TED] [Microsoft Research Blog] [LifeWire] [TechRepublic] [Slack Blog] [Terra] [L'usine Nouvelle] [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung] [Business Daily] [Yahoo Japan] [NYTeknik] [量子位] [新智元]

• Z. Chen*, H. Cao*, Y. Deng, X. Gao, J. Piao, F. Xu, Y. Zhang, Y. Li, Learning from Home: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Live Streaming Based Remote Education Experience in Chinese Colleges during the COVID-19 Pandemic, in CHI 2021. [pdf][doi][presentation]

• H. Cao*, Z. Chen*, M. Cheng, S. Zhao, T. Wang, Y. Li, You Recommend, I Buy: How and Why People Engage in Instant Messaging Based Social Commerce, in CSCW 2021. [pdf][doi] [Podcast]

• G. Zhang, Y. Li, Y. Yuan, F. Xu, H. Cao, D. Jin, Y. Xu, Community Value Prediction in Social E-commerce, in WWW 2021. [pdf] [presentation]

• Y. Yuan, F. Xu, H. Cao, G. Zhang, H. Pan, Y. Li, D. Jin, Persuade to Click: Context-aware Persuasion Model for Online Textual Advertisement, in IEEE TKDE. [pdf][doi]

• Y. Fan, Z. Tu, T. Li, H. Cao, T. Xia, Y. Li, X. Chen, L. Zhang, Understanding the Long-term Dynamics of Mobile App Usage Context via Graph Embedding, in IEEE TKDE. [pdf][doi]

• H. Wang, Y. Li, J. Lin, H. Cao, D. Jin, Context-Aware Semantic Annotation of Mobility Records, in ACM TKDD. [pdf][doi]

• H. Cao, V. Yang, V. Chen, Y. Lee, L. Stone, N. Diarrassouba, M. Whiting, M. Bernstein, My Team Will Go On: Differentiating High and Low Viability Teams through Team Interaction, in CSCW 2020. Honorable Mention Award [pdf][doi] [Project Site][presentation]

• Z. Chen, H. Cao, F. Xu, M. Cheng, T. Wang, Y. Li, Understanding the Role of Intermediaries in Online Social E-commerces: an Exploratory Study of Beidian, in CSCW 2020. [pdf][doi][presentation]

• H. Cao*, M. Cheng*, Z. Cen*, D. McFarland, X. Ren, Will This Idea Spread Beyond Academia? Understanding Knowledge Transfer of Scientific Concepts across Text Corpora, in EMNLP(Findings) 2020 . [pdf][doi][presentation]

• Z. Lin, S. Lyu, H. Cao, F. Xu, Y. Wei, P. Hui, H. Samet, Y. Li, HealthWalks: Sensing Fine-grained Individual Health Condition via Mobility Data, in PACM IMWUT (UbiComp 2021) . [pdf][doi]

• Z. Chen, H. Cao, H. Wang, F. Xu, V. Kostakos, Y. Li, Will You Come Back / Check-in Again? Understanding Characteristics Leading to Urban Revisitation and Re-check-in, in PACM IMWUT (UbiComp 2020). [pdf][doi]

• T. Zhen, H. Cao, E. Lagerspetz, Y. Fan, H. Flores, S. Tarkoma, P. Nurmi, Y. Li, Demographics of Mobile App Usage: Long-Term Analysis of Mobile App Usage, in Springer TPCI. [pdf][doi]

• T. Li, M. Zhang, H. Cao, Y. Li, S. Tarkoma, P. Hui, "What Apps Did You Use?": Understanding the Long-term Evolution of Mobile App Usage, in WWW 2020. [pdf][doi]

• H. Cao*, Z. Chen*, F. Xu, T. Wang, Y. Xu, L. Zhang, Y. Li, When Your Friends Become Sellers: An Empirical Study of Social Commerce Site Beidian, in AAAI ICWSM 2020. [pdf][doi]

• H. Cao, Z. Chen, F. Xu, Y. Li, V. Kostakos, Revisitation in Urban Space vs. Online: A Comparison across POIs, Websites, and Smartphone Apps, in PACM IMWUT (UbiComp 2019). [pdf][slides][doi]

• H. Cao, J. Feng, Y. Li, V. Kostakos, Uniqueness in the City: Urban Morphology and Location Privacy, in PACM IMWUT (UbiComp 2018). [pdf][slides][doi]

• H. Cao, F. Xu, J. Sankaranarayanan, Y. Li, H. Samet, Habit2vec: Trajectory Semantic Embedding for Living Pattern Recognition in Population, in IEEE TMC . [pdf][doi]

• H. Cao, J. Sankaranarayanan, J. Feng, Y. Li, H. Samet, Understanding Metropolitan Crowd Mobility via Mobile Cellular Accessing Data, in ACM TSAS . [pdf][doi]

• M. Zeng, H. Cao, M. Chen, Y. Li, User Behavior Modeling, Recommendations, and Purchase Prediction During Online Shopping Festivals, in Springer Electronic Markets. [pdf][doi]

• H. Shi, H. Cao, X. Zhou, Y. Li, C. Zhang, V. Kostakos, F. Sun, F. Meng, Semantics-Aware HMM for Human Mobility Modelling, in SDM 2019. [pdf][doi]

• H. Shi, Y. Li,, H. Cao, X. Zhou C. Zhang, V. Kostakos, Semantics-Aware HMM for Human Mobility Modelling, in IEEE TKDE (Extended version of SDM'19 paper). [pdf] [doi]

• F. Xu, T. Xia, H. Cao, Y. Li, F. Sun, F. Meng, Detecting Popular Temporal Modes in Population-scale Unlabelled Trajectory Data, in PACM IMWUT (UbiComp 2018). [pdf][doi]

Honors and Awards

• Stanford Data Science Conference Poster Award   2023
• ICSSI Travel Grant   2023
• CHI 2023 Best Paper Award   2023
• IC2S2 Student Scholarship   2022
• Stanford Department of Music Awards - Friends of Music Graduate Prizes   2022
• Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship   2021
  3 year full tuition + stipend coverage, 1 of 33 graduate student awardees, university-wide, in cohort
  
Stanford Friends of Music Scholarship   2021, 2022, 2023
• CHI 2021 Honorable Mention Award   2021
• CSCW 2020 Honorable Mention Award   2020
• Stanford HAI Cloud Credit Grant   2020
• SIGCHI Student Travel Grant   2019
• The James D. Plummer Graduate Fellowship - a School of Engineering (SoE) Fellowship, Stanford University   2018
• UbiComp 2018 Student Travel Grant   2018
• Beijing Outstanding Graduate Award   2018
• Tsinghua Outstanding Graduate Award   2018
• Fellowship of Spark Scientific and Technological Innovation   2016
  Awarded to top 50 of 3560 Tsinghua students for outstanding research performance
  
• China National Scholarship   2017
  Highest level of scholarship set by the government of China
  
• Qualcomm Scholarship   2017
  Awarded to top 33 of 2562 applicants with excellent scientific potential
  
• Philobiblion Scholarship   2016
  Awarded to 0.5% of 1000 applicants
  
• Zhang Mingwei Scholarship   2016
• Changhong Scholarship   2015
• Tsinghua Comprehensive Excellence Award   2015-17
  Awarded to students with excellent comprehensive performance, top ~5% out of 262 students.
  
• Tsinghua Academic Excellence Award   2015-17
• Tsinghua Research Excellence Award   2016-17
• 1st Prize for the 32rd National Undergraduate Physics Olympic   2015