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I will be at ISLS 2026 in Irvine and the Festival of Learning 2026 in Seoul, South Korea. Come say hi if you will be there.
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I passed my doctoral qualifying exam and officially became a Ph.D. candidate. A happy milestone.
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I attended AECT 2025 in Las Vegas and presented work on human-centered AI for learning and instructional design.
Hongming (Chip) Li 「李鸿铭」
email: hli3 [at] ufl.edu
Ph.D. Candidate / Human-AI Interaction Researcher / Full-Stack AI Systems Developer / Kaggle Master
I am a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Florida, working with Dr. Anthony Botelho at VIABLE Lab. My research investigates how people learn, collaborate, and interact with AI systems. I draw on Learning Analytics, Educational Data Mining, NLP/LLMs, and HCI to analyze complex behavioral data and to design AI-supported tools and interventions. A distinguishing aspect of my approach is that I often design and build the systems I study, which lets me iterate between empirical findings and system design in a tighter loop than either research or engineering alone would allow.
My current work centers on human-centered AI systems for assessment, feedback, safety, collaborative problem solving, and AI literacy, supported by the National Science Foundation, Gates Foundation, and OpenAI. I care about systems that are technically reliable, pedagogically grounded, and transparent enough for learners, researchers, educators, and end users to explore and interrogate.
I hold Master's degrees from Johns Hopkins University (Learning Sciences & Technologies) and the University of Southampton, UK (Education), with foundational training from Capital Normal University in Elementary Education and Linguistics. I also maintain an active machine learning practice on Kaggle, where I hold Competitions Master status (global Top 1%) with multiple top-ranked finishes.
Research Interests
Understanding Learning
Learning Analytics, Educational Data Mining, Multimodal Data Analysis, Causal Inference, Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
Building AI Systems for Education
Natural Language Processing, Large Language Models, Human-Computer Interaction, Learning Engineering Tools, Instructional Design Platforms, Educational Feedback Systems
Ensuring Responsible AI in Education
AI Safety, Trustworthy AI, Fairness, Explainability, AI Literacy
CHECKPOINT: AI-Powered Assessment Platform
Research Assistant, Lead Developer & Human-AI Interaction Researcher
Learning Engineering Tools Competition Catalyst Prize project for authoring, delivering, and studying AI-supported assessments. I lead the end-to-end platform architecture across teacher authoring, student runtime, analytics, and support workflows, with LLM generation pipelines, multi-agent workflows, secure telemetry, and deployable classroom research infrastructure.
NuxtVue.jsTypeScriptLLM SystemsContext EngineeringMulti-Agent WorkflowsCloud Deployment
LOGEN AI: AI-Powered Instructional Design Assistant
Research Assistant & Lead Developer & UX Researcher
Full-stack AI platform for transparent human-AI instructional design, generating learning objectives aligned with Bloom's Taxonomy and other educational frameworks. The system combines LLM integration, research-ready interaction logging, usability-driven iteration, and secure serverless deployment.
HTMLCSSJavaScriptPythonLLM IntegrationFirebaseCloudflare Workers
VIABLE Lab LLM API Router & Developer Portal
Lead System Architect & DevOps Engineer
Production-scale LLM gateway serving 6 educational platforms with intelligent provider routing, educational content vetting, real-time cost tracking across 12+ models, a developer portal, and comprehensive OpenAPI 3.0 documentation.
Cloudflare WorkersHono.jsD1 SQLJavaScriptGitHub Actions
VIABLE Lab Research Website
Full-Stack Developer & UX Designer & DevOps Engineer
Migrated to Nuxt.js from Vue.js for modern research laboratory platform with dynamic components, automated CI/CD, and 40% performance improvement.
Nuxt.jsVue.jsViteGitHub ActionsNode.jsPrimeVue
GraspableMath Collaborative Learning Dashboard
AI Engineering & Full-Stack Developer
Interactive dashboard visualizing real-time student collaboration with AI-enhanced analytics for learning pattern extraction, sense-making, and instructional recommendations. Recent work integrates LLM support for interpretable teacher-facing insights.
Vue.jsPythonChart.jsD3.jsRESTful APIsCloudflare WorkersGemini APIServerless
Class-Ready AI: Instructional Design for Pre-Service Teachers
Lead Developer
AI-powered platform providing guided practice for pre-service teachers in crafting effective learning objectives, with alignment to Common Core standards and Bloom's Taxonomy.
Nuxt.jsVue.jsPythonOpenAI APISQL Database
Provoking Minds: AI Agent Debate Platform
Product Manager & Lead Developer
AI agent debate platform designed to enhance critical thinking through structured AI-driven debates and guided analysis of arguments and logical structures.
Nuxt.jsVue.jsPythonOpenAI APICritical Thinking Analytics
Pro-CaRE: Professional Career Recommendation Engine
Lead Developer
AI-enabled recommendation system for undergraduate engineering students to craft optimal career paths through personalized internship experiences and skill gap analysis.
HTMLCSSJavaScriptPythonFastAPIRecommendation Systems
VETTING Chat AI Assistant
Full-Stack Developer & UX Designer
AI assistant validation and safety tool for educational research, with secure identity verification and a modular deployment framework for studying how constrained and policy-aware chatbots support deeper student inquiry.
HTMLCSSJavaScriptFirebaseNode.jsExpress.jsOpenAI API
SmarterFlash Adaptive Learning System
Product Manager & Developer
AI-powered flashcard and self-regulated learning system that studies the balance between automation and learner agency while adapting practice to individual learning patterns.
Machine LearningNuxt.jsVue.jsPythonOpenAI APIServerlessLearning Analytics
PRODUCTIVE: AI Math Problem Generator
Research Assistant & Full-Stack Developer
Gates Foundation-funded platform enabling teachers to generate productive failure math scenarios with LLM integration, social features, and collaborative educator community.
Vue.jsFirebaseJavaScriptLLM Integration
Creativity Assessment: AI-Powered Evaluation Tool
Developer
Rubric-guided multimodal creativity assessment framework using high-capacity generative AI to evaluate human and machine creativity in educational sandbox game environments.
Machine LearningPythonCreativity MetricsAssessment Analytics
Rubber Ducking Problem-Solving Tool
Developer
AI-powered debugging and problem-solving assistant that helps users articulate issues and receive intelligent prompts and suggestions for resolution.
JavaScriptAI IntegrationWeb APIs
NSF EAGER: Orchestrating Productive Collaboration
Research Assistant
Multimodal machine learning analysis of student collaboration in mathematics education, featuring data preprocessing workflows and unsupervised clustering algorithms.
PythonRMachine LearningTime Series Analysis
Side Projects
CiteBar: Real-time Google Scholar Citation Tracker
Creator & Lead Developer
Elegant macOS menu bar application that keeps Google Scholar citation metrics at your fingertips. Perfect for researchers tracking paper impact and celebrating citation milestones.
SwiftSwiftUImacOSMenu Bar AppGoogle Scholar APIOpen Source
Google Gemini CLI
Open Source Contributor
Contributed to Google's official Gemini CLI tool, a command-line interface for interacting with Gemini AI models.
GoCLIOpen SourceGoogle GeminiDeveloper ToolsAI Integration
ChatcatGPT: Customizable AI Assistant
Creator & Full-Stack Developer
A streamlined, customizable AI assistant web application that utilizes OpenAI API. Features both web-hosted and offline versions, allowing users to tailor AI assistant identity and capabilities to their specific needs.
HTMLCSSJavaScriptOpenAI APIWeb ApplicationOffline Support