Hi, I am Chenyi Li 🍊 (She/They). I am a PhD student in Psychology and Computer Science at Cornell University. Currently, I am working with Dr. Nori Jacoby on Human-AI collaboration on creative process.

How do we understand intelligence? Following Feynman’s saying, “What I cannot create, I do not understand,” I study human cognition through the lens of creative problem-solving and human-AI collaboration.

Using large-scale experiments and computational models, I investigate how people search through idea spaces creatively, solve open-ended problems, and adapt their strategies when collaborating with AI. My research reveals a critical paradox: while AI systems enhance individual creative output, they can homogenize the diversity at the collective level—a challenge for scientific discovery and cultural evolution.

I’m developing computational frameworks for division of labor in hybrid human-AI systems, grounded in theories of human cognition and collective intelligence. The goal is to design AI orchestration strategies that enhance individual creativity while preserving the diversity essential for breakthrough science and cultural progress.

I earned my B.Eng. degree in Computer Engineering from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) in 2023. During my time at UC Berkeley, I worked with Dr. Alison Gopnik on a computational model of play. With Dr. Quanying Liu on EEG neural signal denoising.

For my M.S. in Computer Science at New York University, Tandon, I had the opportunity to collaborate with multiple brilliant professors: with Dr. Marcelo Mattar in Psychology on transformer models of meta-reinforcement learning, with Dr. Erdem Varol in the Tandon School of Engineering on hippocampal subregion decoding, and with Dr. Claudio Silva in Computer Science on AR assistance using cognitive user modeling.

Outside of research, I have served as a peer consultant. I also conducted side projects on gender studies. Check out visualization of gender equality statistics here(pls wait for 30s). I enjoy nature, photography, dancing, and Latino literature(Gabriel GarcĂ­a Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude is my fav!). You can also find me at the climbing gym đź’Ş!