Sam Wong
Master’s Student · University of Washington · samw627@uw.edu · chwong.com
Research Interests
Human-Computer Interaction, Human-AI Interaction, Social Computing
Education
09/2023 – 03/2025
University of Washington · Seattle, WA
M.S. in Technology Innovation
09/2019 – 06/2023
University of California, San Diego · San Diego, CA
B.S. in Cognitive Science (Design and Interaction), Minor in Computer Science
- Relevant coursework: Introduction to Statistical Analysis, Introduction to Data Science
Research Experience
10/2024 – present
Social Futures Lab, University of Washington
Research Assistant · Advisor: Amy Zhang
- Leading a project on facilitating political deliberation for individuals through reflection.
- Coordinating with 3 undergraduates on the formative study and thematic analysis.
05/2024 – 04/2025
Ubicomp Lab, University of Washington
Research Assistant · Advisors: Jerry Cao, Shwetak Patel, Jennifer Mankoff
- Designing an accessible eyedropper for people with low vision and limited motor dexterity.
- Conducted a formative study and thematic analysis with 9 participants on the challenges of using eye drops; developed the front-end application for tracking eye-drop usage.
06/2023 – 04/2025
PRIME Lab, Virginia Tech
Research Assistant · Advisor: Yan Chen
- Designed and developed VizPI, a real-time classroom tool that facilitates peer instruction at scale [P.1, C.2].
- Designed and implemented a visualization system that uses LLMs to help instructors understand class discussion [C.1].
- Designed an LLM-powered feedback system that lets instructors give feedback to students at scale [P.2, C.3].
- Analyzed quantitative user-study data with pandas, including NASA-TLX workload scores and precision/recall metrics, to compare baseline and treatment conditions in LLM-powered feedback systems [C.3].
01/2024 – 03/2024
Directed Research Group, University of Washington
Research Assistant · Advisors: Sourojit Ghosh, Cecilia Aragon
- Conducted a literature review on how researchers and designers of recommender systems measure success.
06/2022 – 09/2022
Diabetes Design Initiative, The Design Lab, UC San Diego
UX Researcher · Lead: Heidi Rataj
- Interviewed people with diabetes (8) and health-care professionals (2) about the challenges of diabetes onboarding.
- Analyzed interview data with affinity diagrams and ideated solutions.
- Ran A/B tests and lab usability tests with target users.
Full Papers / Preprints
[C.1] UIST 2024
VizGroup: An AI-assisted Event-driven System for Real-time Collaborative Programming Learning Analytics
[C.2] SIGCSE 2025
The Impact of Group Discussion and Formation on Student Performance: An Experience Report in a Large CS1 Course
[C.3] arXiv 2025
REVA: Supporting LLM-Generated Programming Feedback Validation at Scale Through User Attention-based Adaptation
Posters
[P.1] UIST 2023
VizPI: A Real-Time Visualization Tool for Enhancing Peer Instruction in Large-Scale Programming Lectures
[P.2] CHI 2025
SPHERE: Scaling Personalized Feedback in Programming Classrooms with Structured Review of LLM Outputs
Teaching Experience
Fall 2022 – Spring 2023
CSE 15L: Software Tools and Techniques
Computer Science Tutor · UC San Diego
- Tutored for a 300-student course on software tools such as GDB, Makefiles, bash scripts and git.
- Managed the class's online forum questions and graded assignments.
- Hosted three 2-hour lab sections per week with over 30 students, with a 100% student approval rating.
Winter 2023
COGS 123: Social Computing
Instructional Assistant · UC San Diego
- Held discussion sections and facilitated student discussion of social computing research papers.
- 98% positive student rating in end-of-quarter evaluations.
Fall 2022
COGS 120: Introduction to HCI
Instructional Assistant · UC San Diego
- Graded HCI survey papers for over 50 students.
Languages and Tools
Programming languages
Java, C/C++, Python, HTML/CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript
Tools and frameworks
Git, bash, React, Firebase, LangChain, Figma, pandas, seaborn