News | Melissa Chen

I am excited to share that I received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP) starting in fall 2024!
In the spring quarter, I will be a practicum student in the Northwestern ETHS Partnership Office through the Graduate Engagement Opportunities program.
I was awarded the Design Cluster Research Fellowship at Northwestern.

I will be presenting some preliminary results on our work “Designing a Real-time Intervention to Address Negative Self-assessments While Programming” at ICER 2023 in Chicago.
I attended the 2023 CRA-WP Grad Cohort for Women. I got to learn more about different aspects of grad school, network, and present a poster on my work so far.
I received the ACM-W Research Conference Scholarship to attend SIGCSE TS 2023. I reflected on my experience here.
I presented my plans for my research this quarter as a poster at the 2022 Lambert Conference on the Future of Human-Computer Interaction + Design at Northwestern in October!

I graduated from the University of Illinois in May! Next up: I will be interning on the Lyft Pink & Memberships team as a software engineer intern before starting a PhD at Northwestern.
I participated in the inaugural class of CS STARS! The program is a new initiative by the CS department to jointly encourage research and mentorship/outreach for women in computing. I was featured as a part of an article by the department about how this program was a great way to close out my college career and how it prepared me for my upcoming adventures.
I presented my senior year research work, advised by Professor Brian Bailey and Wendy Shi, on Disparities by Gender in Self and Peer Evaluation at the Undergraduate Research Symposium!
I was featured in a video by the Grainger College of Engineering! I got a chance to talk about the Siebel Center for Computer Science and my most meaningful experiences at UIUC: serving as a course assistant for computer architecture, an officer for Women in Computer Science, and a co-director of HackIllinois

Melissa Chen