Lei (Nico) Zheng 郑蕾
I study how people and AI coordinate.
I am an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the College of Management, UMass Boston.
- people
- bots
This is a live simulation. Each mark senses only what is right in front of it. None of them knows the whole picture, and it appears anyway. Draw with your cursor and they will follow you too.Drag a finger across and they will follow you too.
About me
I received my Ph.D. in Data Science from Stevens Institute of Technology, where I worked with Dr. Jeffrey V. Nickerson and Dr. Feng Mai. Before that I was a data scientist in industry, working on analytics, machine learning, and NLP.
I use machine learning, econometrics, NLP, social network analysis, and agent-based simulation. My work has appeared in the Journal of Management Information Systems and the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW), and at ICIS, HICSS, and WITS.
Two directions
How machines change human collaboration
A machine does not have to change what people want in order to change what they do. It can change the environment they read.
Designing AI systems for reliable human use
Better machines are not simply more accurate. They reveal the limits of their judgment, integrate evidence rather than merely generate answers, and preserve human control and agency.
Currently working on
- AI agents and bots in open collaboration communities
- How reliably LLMs can stand in for human respondents and reviewers
- LLM pipelines for financial decision support
- AI in teaching and academic work