👋 Hi, I’m Bufan!

I’m a first-year PhD student in Psychology at the University of Chicago, luckily advised by Prof. Xuechunzi Bai in the Computational Social Cognition Lab.

Before coming to Chicago, I completed my undergraduate and master’s degrees in Computer Science at Fudan University where I worked in SecSys Lab under the guidance by Prof. Yuan Zhang and Prof. Jiarun Dai, focusing on the robustness of autonomous driving systems. I also worked as a research intern at the Coalas Lab, where I was luckily advised by Prof. Elisa Kreiss, focusing on the brittle nature of LLM bias measurement.

Please see my CV for more details.

I’m always happy to chat—feel free to drop me a message if you’d like to connect!

Research Interests

My research interests lie broadly in human cognitive science—how people think, learn, and coordinate in complex social environments. I am fascinated by the art-like nature of human intelligence: our minds not only compute but also improvise, adapt, and create patterns together.

To study these questions, I use computational modeling and multi-agent simulations as tools to bridge psychological theory with formal analysis. My current projects focus on social bias and inequality, exploring how they can emerge from seemingly rational decision-making in collective settings.

At the same time, I remain open to new directions (still exploring!) at the intersection of cognition, computation, and society, from large language models as cognitive mirrors to the dynamics of human–AI collaboration.