Hello!

Grateful and excited to share - starting late 2025, I will be joining the Department of Computer Science at the National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) (Hsinchu, Taiwan) as an Assistant Professor. I will be sharing more about my future plans (e.g., research group, recruitment, and collaboration) soon!

I recently completed my PhD in Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, as a member of the PIE Lab with Prof. Daniel Epstein.

My research focus on helping people to connect with each other effectively through using social technology for their social goals, such as receiving social well-being or communication benefits. Specifically, I study, build, and evaluate social technology that support the communication process of sharing activities (e.g., hobbies and things people care about) which allow people to achieve their social well-being goals.

I apply a mixed-method approach to (1) advance understanding of people's practices and experience with the design of social media platform, (2) design and build systems based on the empirical evidence from these studies and theories, and (3) conduct real-world field deployment studies with the target communities to understand the impact of my design.

In my doctoral work, I study the sharing of activities with personal tracking data on social media platforms. I argue that when people are supported in aligning their sharing with the ideal practices or existing sharing norms of the platform, they will receive more desired sharing outcomes.

For additional details about my work and publications, please explore my CV or Google Scholar profile.

Prior to UC Irvine, I received a M.S. degree in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S., and a B.S. degree in Computer Science from National Chengchi University, Taiwan.

I am a fan of music, book about books, criticism of all kinds, ice cream, and coffee brewing.

Find me on [ LinkedIn | Twitter | Bluesky ] or email me at dennisw7 at uci dot edu