Shenghui Chen CS PhD @UTAustin

Shenghui (Vivian) Chen

I am a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, advised by Professor Ufuk Topcu. I obtained B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia, advised by Professor Lu Feng.

My research interest is in human-centered AI, with a focus on collaborative agents that infer intent, adapt their behavior, and communicate effectively with people. Recently, I have also become interested in human-centered evaluation of vision-language models (VLMs).

I am currently seeking opportunities for industry collaboration. Please feel free to reach out via shenghui.chen [at] utexas [dot] edu!

Email  /  GitHub  /  Google Scholar

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News & Updates

  • Aug 2025 – Check out our new preprint on annotation-free video-to-text evaluation, introducing VIBE to select captions as human-centered TL;DRs
  • Aug 2025 – Presented at the NSF CPS Frontier Site Visit, Purdue University on title “Communicating “Just Enough” Information to Enhance Human-Agent Collaboration”
  • Apr 2025 – Presented at the AIML Seminar, University of Virginia on title “Human-Agent Collaboration under Incomplete Information: Intent, Communication, and Planning”

Publications

Human-Agent Interaction

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    		Human-Agent Coordination in Games under Incomplete Information via Multi-Step Intent
    Shenghui Chen, Ruihan Zhao, Sandeep Chinchali, Ufuk Topcu
    International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2025
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    		Human-Agent Cooperation in Games under Incomplete Information through Natural Language Communication
    Shenghui Chen, Daniel Fried, Ufuk Topcu
    International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Human-Centred AI, 2024
    paper   doi   bibtex   code  

Inverse Game

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    		Soft-Bellman Equilibrium in Affine Markov Games: Forward Solutions and Inverse Learning
    Shenghui Chen, Yue Yu, David Fridovich-Keil, and Ufuk Topcu
    Conference on Decision and Control, 2023
    paper   doi   bibtex   code  
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    		Cost Design in Atomic Routing Games
    Yue Yu, Shenghui Chen, David Fridovich-Keil,and Ufuk Topcu
    American Control Conference, 2023
    paper   doi   bibtex   code   blog  
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    		Relationship Design for Socially-Aware Behavior in Static Games
    Shenghui Chen, Yigit E. Bayiz, David Fridovich-Keil, and Ufuk Topcu
    Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
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Others
  • Deceptive Planning for Resource Allocation
    Shenghui Chen, Yagiz Savas, Mustafa O. Karabag, Brian Sadler, Ufuk Topcu
    American Control Conference, 2024
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  • Towards transparent robotic planning via contrastive explanations
    Shenghui Chen, Kayla Boggess, and Lu Feng
    International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2020
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  • Performance Modeling and Verification of Load Balancing in Cloud Systems Using Formal Methods
    Shenghui Chen, Zhiming Fan, Haiying Shen, and Lu Feng
    IEEE 16th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems Workshops, 2019
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Outreach Activities