Welcome

I am John (Yuehan) Chen, a tenure-track assistant professor in Game Design and Development at the University of Arizona, College of Information Science. I recently defended my Ph.D dissertation in Computer Science and Learning Sciences at Northwestern University under the supervision of Prof. Uri Wilensky.

I am hiring one Ph.D student in Fall 2027 and our group constantly welcomes research assistants. Please reach out to me if you are self-motivated and strongly interested at the intersection of Human-AI Interaction, Playful Learning, and Generative AI.

As a human-computer interaction and learning researcher, I study how to leverage AI-driven technologies, such as Generative AI (GAI) or Mixed Reality, to promote access to playful informal learning at scale. I have led the research, design, and development of Physics Lab AR and Turtle Universe, App Store-featured software, reaching 7 million online, out-of-school learners worldwide.

Those projects have produced large-scale human interaction datasets that challenge existing research methodologies. To augment researchers’ capabilities in understanding them, I develop and evaluate novel computational approaches with GAI for inductive qualitative coding. This line of work has been funded by the National Science Foundation (Future CoRe: IIS HCC; Co-PI, my share $450,000; 2026-2029).

At the University of Arizona, I developed Vox Deorum, a hybrid LLM architecture for Civilization V, opening new pathways for integrating agentic into strategic game design for learning and fun.