Ph.D. Student · Kellogg School of Management
Bolun Sun 孙伯伦
I study human-centered AI and human–AI decision-making, focusing on how AI shapes the information people encounter, the judgments they form, and the decisions they make.
About
I am a Ph.D. student at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, working with Professor William J. Brady.
Before joining Northwestern, I was a Research Engineer at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, working with Professor Yuen Yuen Ang and Charles Chang. I hold dual master’s degrees in Information Systems and Computer Science from Johns Hopkins, with a concentration in Human Language Technology.
I earned my bachelor’s degree in Informatics from the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at UC Irvine, specializing in Human-Computer Interaction and Health Informatics, and worked with Professor Mark Warschauer and Dr. Dandan Yang on educational technology. My research is computational and interdisciplinary, combining AI and NLP methods with perspectives from computational social science, HCI, and behavioral science. I am also increasingly incorporating behavioral experiments from the social sciences to study how people interact with and make decisions alongside AI. I have published multiple papers in top-tier conferences, including ICLR, NeurIPS, and ACL, where I also serve as a reviewer.
Email: bolun.sun AT kellogg.northwestern.edu WeChat:
Research Interests
- Human-Centered AI
- Human–AI interaction, interactive AI agents, digital privacy management, cognitive support, and human agency
- Human–AI Decision-Making
- AI-assisted judgment, information selection, social learning, reliance on AI, and individual and collective decision processes
- Computational Social Science & Policy Communication
- Adaptive policy communication, opinion and social dynamics, social media analysis, and NLP/LLM methods for studying social behavior
Methods
Decision phenomena
Research outputs
Behavioral experiments + computational social science → information selection and social learning → Artificial Intelligence Systems Distort Upstream Selection in Human Social Learning (PsyArXiv, 2026).
Interactive research map. Focus or select a method, decision phenomenon, or research output to trace its connected path.
News
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📑 Preprint released: Artificial Intelligence Systems Distort Upstream Selection in Human Social Learning.
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🎉 Paper accepted to ACL Main 2026 (Oral): CAPC-CG: A Large-Scale, Expert-Directed LLM-Annotated Corpus of Adaptive Policy Communication in China.
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🎓 Admitted to the 2026 International Programme on AI Evaluation: Capabilities and Safety.
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🎉 Paper accepted to NeurIPS 2025: Language Models (Mostly) Know When to Stop Reading.
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🎓 Started the Ph.D. program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
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Concluded my Research Engineer role at the JHU SNF Agora Institute.
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🎉 Paper accepted to ICLR 2025: Empowering Users in Digital Privacy Management through Interactive LLM-Based Agents.
Personal
I have been a professional chess player, consistently ranking in the top three in provincial and national tournaments. I also held the top position in the Ivy League Championship standings for several years.
I am an avid soccer and basketball fan and a die-hard supporter of the San Antonio Spurs. I love hiking and exploring the outdoors with my Golden Retriever, TP—arguably the friendliest dog in the world.