CURRENT STATUS
ABOUT ME

I'm a third-year student studying a Bachelor's of Science degree in Computer Science and Philosophy with a Minor in Mathematics at Northeastern University Khoury College of Computer Sciences. My journey so far have shaped my core passion: building technology that guides and empowers people to intuitively make better decisions and live good lives. Right now, I conduct research in fostering virtues online, nudging techniques, and human-centric design at the Plural Connections Group. Outside of my life in tech, I've enjoy teaching underclassmen Algorithms & Data Structures as the Director of Tech Consulting at TAMID, taking too long to finish the Dune series, and spending time in the great outdoors via hiking and snowboarding.

My early education was founded on the principle that math was everything. Ever since I was young, I participated (poorly) in competitive math teams, went to Idea Math Camp, and then much later, a six-week intensive summer studies at Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics, where I really began to appreciate the quirks and scope of the field. I took my interests into computer science, where I enjoyed the marriage of theoretical thinking and practical application. In 2020, I was accepted into the MIT PRIMES's Computer Science Research track where I worked with Jules Drean, a graduate student at MIT CSAIL, on a project called Non-Fungible Objects (NFO): Hard-to-Counterfeit Virtual Assets Based On Trusted-Hardware. I joined Northeastern in 2022 where I expanded my knowledge about computer science into the world of full stack web development and AI at the TAMID Group on campus and at Samsung AI. I soon became obsessed with computer science as it became the medium for both my quantitative and creative expression. During the same year, I read Superintelligence: Risks, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom and became enraptured by tech, ethics, and society. My activities during 2023 reflected all my interests: I strengthened my technical literacy at a Software Engineering Internship at Ampion, PBC and worked with Professor Patterson at the Northeastern University to work on his code synthesizer research project combating automation bias, and bringing AI into programming languages. In 2024, I started working at the Plural Connections Group as a Research Engineer Co-op on their Intellectual Humility initiative and led TAMID as their Executive Vice President. All in all, my work isn’t just about writing code—it’s about exploring how technology shapes the way we think, interact, and solve problems. And that’s what keeps me excited for what’s next.

EXPLORE ME

Rachel Chen
Mail: rachel.j.chen@gmail.com
GitHub: github.com/RachelJiarui LinkedIn: linkedIn.com/racheljiarui
Phone Number: (617)-438-9641

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

08/19/24
12/31/24

Research Engineer @ Plural Connections Group

Working at Northeastern University under Professor Nabeel Gillani at lab aimed to increase pluralism through education and restructuring social media.

05/20/24
08/16/24

Software Engineering Intern @ UKG

Worked at Lowell HQ on Cloud Observability and Realiability Tooling team.

05/15/23
8/25/23

Software Engineering Intern @ Ampion

Worked on the Subscriber Experience team to conduct full rehaul and modernization of main website.

05/15/23
07/01/23

Multivariable Calculus Teacher Assistant

Graded weekly quizzes for over 60 students and provided solution manual feedback for Professor Seo.

LEADERSHIP ROLES

01/01/25
05/01/25

Director of Tech Consulting of TAMID

Scoped project for 6 developers and teach weekly lessons in algorithms and technical interview preparation to peers.

05/01/24
12/31/24

Executive Vice President of TAMID

Oversaw operations for 150+ member club, led 13 executive leaders and 7 committees to drive strategic initiatives in recruitment, finances, social and professional engagement.

12/01/23
05/01/24

VP of Operations & Finance of TAMID

Handled back-end logistics of TAMID Consulting Club involving finances, calendar, room bookings, recruitment data, etc.

07/01/23
12/01/23

Tech Consulting Foundations Instructor of TAMID

Educated a weekly class of 13 students on web development fundamentals: Git/Version Control, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, and APIs.

RESEARCH

01/01/25
05/01/25

Research Assistant at Plural Connections Group

Same desc. as Research Engineer position at Plural Connections Group under Professional Experience.

05/01/23
12/31/24

Research Assistant to Professor Daniel Patterson

Prototyped an environment to prevent automation bias for integrated human-AI optimized Python programming leveraging ChatGPT API.

01/01/24
05/11/24

Human Autonomy in Digital Social Networks and Recommender Systems

Independent research project advised by Professor Patterson exploring autonomy, a new framework for defining of autonomy, and applying it to social media platforms that use recommender systems. Created and presented poster at RISE Undergraduate Conference Presentation on April 11th, 2024.

01/01/21
07/27/22

Computer Science Researcher at MIT CSAIL

Invented research paper on secure hardware to ensure digital ownership on virtual objects using crytopgrahy. Specified 3 security mechanisms to unwanted side-channels and logic using cryptographic protocols analysis.

WRITTEN WORK

11/17/23
12/08/23

Erosion of Autonomy in Algorithmic Recommendation Systems

A dissection of the erosion of autonomy in algorithmic recommendation systems, how they are incompatible, and state an urgency of legal action.

10/23/23
11/08/23

Free Speech is a Triangle Literature Review

A summary of the Jack Balkin piece "Free Speech is a Triangle," where I propose a technological solution of using decentralized social platforms to safeguard users' freedom of speech against what he deemed "new-speech regulation" harms.

CLICK TO EXPLORE TECHNICAL PROJECTS

09/01/2024
012/19/2024

Social Cues Intervention on Reddit-Like Platform

Deployed and developed full-stack app on AWS mimicking Reddit to test hypothesis on use of social cues to increase intellectual humility in online discussions on U.S. politics. Worked with Dartmouth NLP Group to develop and fine-tune an intellectual humility classifier on political speech.

05/01/2024
08/30/2024

Truth Agent @ Google Gemini Developer Competition

Pioneering browser extention AI system to foster critical thinking skills by measuring real-time online misinformation on the page. Submitted to Google Gemini Developer Competition, pending results.

GitHub link to Truth Agent

03/29/2024
03/30/2024

EduFlex @ NU AI Hackathon

1st Place Winner. Empowering public free online computer science education to lower the barrier of entry for low-income students who don’t have access to prestigious university resources using NLP.

GitHub link to EduFlex

03/01/2024
04/10/2024

Tripartite Soul AI

Diagnosis your tripartite soul and speak with Plato to make your soul most just. Uses Plato's Republic and his dialogues.

GitHub link to Tripartite Soul AI

05/01/23
09/01/24

Synth Research

Created prototype which queries python code from ChatGPT to match function specification. Wrote testing system which requeries ChatGPT with error messages with faulty implementations. Deployed Blackjack Game lab for 50 students to use to test the prototype and provide feedback on their experience.

01/01/2020
07/27/2022

Non-Fungible Objects (NFO): Hard-to-Counterfeit Virtual Assets Based On Trusted-Hardware

Research that introduces a new technology for virtual assets by securely tying their initialization, development and exchange to our secure hardware. We assert that our version of virtual ownership is stronger than Non-Fungible Tokens' (NFT) version.

LinkedIn link to view paper

04/20/23
05/01/23

High Resolution Image Cropping

Tool to crop images without losing resolution. Used optimized graph traversal techniques and object-oriented design principles to remove seams of the least important pixels on an image, preventing loss of resolution quality of the image when cropping.

02/01/2023
05/15/2023

Multilingual Speech Generation

Lowers the language barrier by enabling personalized conversation, which can provide speakers of other languages better access to fair education, employment, public services, and medical attention. Achieved 83% speech identification accuracy using a KNN model and through researching zero-shot generation.

On Failure and Feeling Cool
Overcompetitive student clubs and my relationship with failure
1,914 words April 14, 2025
On Leadership
My experience falling into leadership, why I pursued it, and what it meant to my personal growth.
XX words Incoming
Autonomy, Leisure and Technology
How technological systems erode our autonomy and our abilities to think critically.
XX words Incoming