👋 Hi, I’m Bufan!

I’m a first-year PhD student in Psychology at the University of Chicago, fortunate to be 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.

Please see my CV for more details.

Research Interests

My research examines how micro-level individual behaviors can unintentionally produce harmful macro-level outcomes such as bias, stereotypes, and social hierarchy. I focus on collective dynamics in both human and artificial intelligence systems, using computational modeling and agent-based simulations to test and refine psychological theory. In particular, I study how intelligent agents learn, coordinate, and sometimes systematically fail in complex social environments.

More broadly, I am interested in human cognitive science and how people think, learn, and coordinate under uncertainty. I am especially fascinated by the art-like nature of human intelligence. The human mind does not merely compute. It improvises, adapts, and creates patterns collectively.

News

• 2026-02 I received BOTH the Norman Henry Anderson Travel Award and the Norman Henry Anderson Research Award (Winter 2026)!
• 2026-02 I joined the program committee for FSE SE4ADS 2026! Looking forward to your submissions!
• 2026-02 My FIRST tutorial with my advisor Prof. Bai was accepted at IC2S2 2026! See you in Burlington! 🎉
• 2025-12 I received the PGSO Travel and Research Grant (2025)!
• 2025-11 My work Collective Bias Emerges Even from Rational Social Learning was accepted for a paper talk at MPA 2026! See you in Chicago! [paper], [data]
• 2025-10 My work Rational Social Learning Makes Group Hiring More Efficient and Biased was selected for the Spotlight Data Blitz at SPSP 2026! See you in Chicago! [paper], [data]
• 2025-09 Moved to Chicago and started my PhD! 😎 [student profile]
• 2025-08 My paper Measuring Bias or Measuring the Task: Understanding the Brittle Nature of LLM Gender Biases was accepted at EMNLP 2025! Thanks to Prof. Elisa Kreiss for the amazing guidance! ☺️ [paper], [code]
• 2025-07 Presented Microfoundations of Statistical Discrimination as a parallel talk at IC2S2 2025 in Norrköping, Sweden!
• 2025-06 I successfully defended my master’s thesis and graduated! Many thanks to my advisors Prof. Jiarun Dai and Prof. Yun Zhang! 🙏
• 2025-02 I was accepted to the University of Chicago Psychology PhD programam fortunate to work with Prof. Xuechunzi Bai!
• 2025-01 I joined the program committee for ICSE SE4ADS 2025! Looking forward to your submissions!
• 2024-11 Presented SCTrans at ICSE 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal!
• 2024-05 My first paper SCTrans was accepted at ICSE 2024! See you in Portugal! [paper], [code]