Wanling Cai
she/her
Assistant Professor
wanling.cai@ucd.ie
Research Areas
Human-AI Interaction for Health and Wellbeing
wHAT INSPIRES MY RESEARCH
AI is a design challenge, not just an engineering problem. To create AI that could truly benefit and augment our lives, we need to first deeply understand the human experience. I’m interested in understanding how people experience emerging AI technologies in their daily lives and designing human-AI interactions that foster human flourishing. I’m particularly passionate about exploring AI’s potential to better support mental health and well-being.
I am an AdAstra Fellow / Assistant Professor in Human-AI Collaboration with the School of Computer Science, University College Dublin. Before joining UCD, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Lero & in the Health Technology Design Group at the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin. Prior to that, I received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2022, and her Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering from Shenzhen University in China in 2018.
My research lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI), artificial intelligence (AI), health and well-being, where I seek to support people in leading healthy, thriving lives through responsible design of AI technologies. Towards this, my work mainly adopts human-centered methods to explore, design, and evaluate interactive AI systems (e.g., recommender systems, conversational systems, generative AI, and wearables) to support everyday decision-making and health contexts. My work is inherently interdisciplinary, informed by computer and information science, design, psychology, and cognitive science.