Melissa Chen

Melissa Chen

PhD Candidate // Computer Science // Northwestern University

I design sociotechnical learning environments to support novice computing students' motivation, self-efficacy, and learning.

๐Ÿ“ข I am on the academic job market during the 2026-2027 academic year. I am looking for tenure-track faculty and postdoctoral researcher positions where I can continue to pursue my research interests in designing more inclusive and supportive learning environments and where I can grow my design-based research skills. Please reach out if you know of or have opportunities!

I am a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in computer science and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow (NSF GRFP) at Northwestern University, advised by Professor Eleanor O'Rourke in the Delta Lab. I am an interdisciplinary, design-based researcher at the intersection of human-computer interaction and computing education working to understand how to design sociotechnical systems that support students' computing self-efficacy.

I graduated with a B.S. in computer science and a minor in math from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May 2022. As an undergraduate researcher, my research interests varied greatly and included machine learning for satellite crop monitoring (at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications) and quantitatively understanding disparities in self and peer evaluations in group work settings (in the ORCHID Lab).

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Recent news

๐Ÿ“… Conference
Hosting a tutorial at SIGCSE TS 2027 to co-design classroom interventions to support student self-assessments of programming ability
๐Ÿง‘โ€๐Ÿซ Teaching
TA-ing for CS 110 (Introduction to Programming) this fall! I am so excited to get back into teaching.
๐Ÿ“„ Paper
Poster on student self-assessments of programming ability when using LLMs accepted at ICER 2026 in Uppsala, Sweden. Paper on siding in CS1 classrooms and poster on self-assessments in pair programming, both led by Kristin Fasiang, also accepted.
๐Ÿ“… Conference
Co-organizing Workshop on Advancing Theory, Research, and Practice for Generative AI in University-Level Computing Education at Northwestern University on July 20! This in-person, interactive workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners to discuss what we must consider to support just, inclusive, and caring learning environments for all students.
๐Ÿ“… Conference
Attending HCIC 2026 in Estes Park, Colorado, where I will be presenting a poster on my dissertation work
All news โ†’

Profile picture photo credit: Sophia Krause-Levy (ICER 2026)