About

Hello there! I’m Kehang.

I’m a fourth year Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University. I’ve been jointly advised by Prof. John Horton from MIT Sloan’s IT group and Prof. David Parkes from Harvard’s EconCS group. I am currently supported by Google DeepMind Seed Fund.

I study AI agents as proxies for human decision-making, as well as how individuals collaborate with these agents in economic contexts. My recent work explores the capabilities, benefits, and trade-offs of deploying large language models (LLMs) as autonomous agents by developing innovative AI tools and conducting large-scale social economics experiments.

My Research

Automated Social Science: Language Models as Scientist and Subjects

_{With John Horton and Benjamin Manning.}

_{Reject and Resubmit at the Quarterly Journal of Economics.}

_{Selected Media: Marginal revolution, The Future of Being Human, One Useful Thing,}

Learning from Synthetic Laboratory: Language Models as Auction Participants

_{With Anand Shah, Jeffery Wang, Arif K. Dayi, Yanchen Jiang, John Horton and David Parkes}

_{NeurIPS 2024 (Workshop), EC 2024 (Poster)}

LLM-Powered Preference Elicitation in Combinatorial Assignment

_{With Ermis Soumalias, Yanchen Jiang, Michael Curry, Sven Seuken, David C. Parkes}

_{Submitted to ICML 2025}

My Journey So Far

Before joining Harvard, I was very lucky, undeservedly so, to be host by Nobel Laureate in Physics Prof. Frank Wilczek in MIT. I was working on using Quantum field theory to model correlated dynamics inside a class of material (quantum spin ice) News.

My research interests turned to human and society after an enriching collaboration with Prof. Hanspeter Pfister from Harvard Viusal Computing Group. I ran large-scale human-subject studies to investigate the mental models of people making sense of visualizations CHI 24’. Reading Between the Pixels: Investigating the Barriers to Visualization Literacy

Recently, I was selected as the Introduction to Technical AI Safety Fellow with the AI Safety Student Team

A Pinch of Extra

When I’m not geeking out over research, you can find me capturing the world through my camera lens 📸, embracing the beauty of nature 🌲, hitting the ski slopes 🎿, or trekking through scenic trails 🥾.

Selected Honors

• Introduction to Technical AI Safety Fellowship, 2024
• Purcell Fellowship (Harvard), 2021
• Guo Moruo Scholarship (Highest honor for USTC undergrad students), 2020
• Yan Jici Scholarship (Highest honor for Physics department undergrad students), 2020