Junrong Chen
Incoming Computer Science PhD student @ University of California, Irvine

I am an incoming PhD student at UC Irvine, where I am honored to be advised by Prof. Judy Hoffman. Previously, I obtained my bachelor's degree at UC San Diego (B.S. '26) double-major in Mathematics–Computer Science and Cognitive Science with Specialization in Machine Learning and Neural Computation, where I worked with Prof. Zhiting Hu, Prof. Sarah Creel, and Prof. Jennifer J. Sun.

My research interests include world models, embodied AI, and AI agents, with a broader focus on high-level capabilities of AI.

Curriculum Vitae

Education
  • University of California, Irvine
    University of California, Irvine
    CS PhD student
    Sept. 2026 -
  • University of California, San Diego
    University of California, San Diego
    B.S. in Mathematics–Computer Science and Cognitive Science with Specialization in Machine Learning and Neural Computation
    Sept. 2022 – Dec. 2025
Honors & Awards
  • UCSD Triton Research & Experiential Learning Scholarship (TRELS), Spring 2024
    2024
  • UCSD Provost Honors (2022–2024)
    2024
  • IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (HKN)
    2024
News
2026
Join UCI as a CS PhD student
Sep 01
World Reasoning Arena published!
Mar 01
2025
PAN World Model Released!
Nov 14
Whisper accent & context evaluation preprint released!
Sep 04
WM-ABench released!
Jun 30
2024
UC San Diego Provost Honors
Jun 20
Joined MixLab (UC San Diego)
Mar 24
Inducted into IEEE–Eta Kappa Nu (HKN)
Jan 27
2023
Joined LASR Lab (UC San Diego)
Apr 01
Selected Publications (view all )
World Reasoning Arena

PAN Team Institute of Foundation Models: Qiyue Gao*, Kun Zhou*, Jiannan Xiang*, Zihan Liu*, Dequan Yang, Junrong Chen, Arif Ahmad, Cong Zeng, Ganesh Bannur, Xinqi Huang, Zheqi Liu, Yi Gu, Yichi Yang, Guangyi Liu, Zhiting Hu, Zhengzhong Liu, Eric Xing (* equal contribution)

World Reasoning Arena

PAN Team Institute of Foundation Models: Qiyue Gao*, Kun Zhou*, Jiannan Xiang*, Zihan Liu*, Dequan Yang, Junrong Chen, Arif Ahmad, Cong Zeng, Ganesh Bannur, Xinqi Huang, Zheqi Liu, Yi Gu, Yichi Yang, Guangyi Liu, Zhiting Hu, Zhengzhong Liu, Eric Xing (* equal contribution)

PAN: A World Model for General, Interactable, and Long-Horizon World Simulation

PAN Team Institute of Foundation Models: Jiannan Xiang, Yi Gu, Zihan Liu, Zeyu Feng, Qiyue Gao, Yiyan Hu, Benhao Huang, Guangyi Liu, Yichi Yang, Kun Zhou, Davit Abrahamyan, Arif Ahmad, Ganesh Bannur, Junrong Chen, Kimi Chen, Mingkai Deng, Ruobing Han, Xinqi Huang, Haoqiang Kang, Zheqi Li, Enze Ma, Hector Ren, Yashowardhan Shinde, Rohan Shingre, Ramsundar Tanikella, Kaiming Tao, Dequan Yang, Xinle Yu, Cong Zeng, Binglin Zhou, Zhengzhong Liu, Zhiting Hu, Eric P. Xing

PAN: A World Model for General, Interactable, and Long-Horizon World Simulation

PAN Team Institute of Foundation Models: Jiannan Xiang, Yi Gu, Zihan Liu, Zeyu Feng, Qiyue Gao, Yiyan Hu, Benhao Huang, Guangyi Liu, Yichi Yang, Kun Zhou, Davit Abrahamyan, Arif Ahmad, Ganesh Bannur, Junrong Chen, Kimi Chen, Mingkai Deng, Ruobing Han, Xinqi Huang, Haoqiang Kang, Zheqi Li, Enze Ma, Hector Ren, Yashowardhan Shinde, Rohan Shingre, Ramsundar Tanikella, Kaiming Tao, Dequan Yang, Xinle Yu, Cong Zeng, Binglin Zhou, Zhengzhong Liu, Zhiting Hu, Eric P. Xing

Whisper automatic speech recognition and humans are similarly sensitive to accents, but use sentence context differently

Junrong Chen, Jan Kwong, Sarah Paull, Sarah Creel

Whisper automatic speech recognition and humans are similarly sensitive to accents, but use sentence context differently

Junrong Chen, Jan Kwong, Sarah Paull, Sarah Creel

Do Vision-Language Models Have an Internal World Model? Towards an Atomic Evaluation

Qiyue Gao*, Xinyu Pi*, Kevin Liu, Junrong Chen, Ruolan Yang, Xinqi Huang, Xinyu Fang, Lu Sun, Gautham Kishore, Bo Ai, Stone Tao, Mengyang Liu, Jiaxi Yang, Chao-Jung Lai, Chuanyang Jin, Jiannan Xiang, Benhao Huang, David Danks, Hao Su, Tianmin Shu, Ziqiao Ma, Lianhui Qin, Zhiting Hu (* equal contribution)

Do Vision-Language Models Have an Internal World Model? Towards an Atomic Evaluation

Qiyue Gao*, Xinyu Pi*, Kevin Liu, Junrong Chen, Ruolan Yang, Xinqi Huang, Xinyu Fang, Lu Sun, Gautham Kishore, Bo Ai, Stone Tao, Mengyang Liu, Jiaxi Yang, Chao-Jung Lai, Chuanyang Jin, Jiannan Xiang, Benhao Huang, David Danks, Hao Su, Tianmin Shu, Ziqiao Ma, Lianhui Qin, Zhiting Hu (* equal contribution)

Whispers of knowledge: ASR vs human performance in child transcription

Sarah Creel, Junrong Chen, Caroline Hall-Sherr, Carly Villongco, Sadrac Santacruzlbarra, Kaitlyn Chou

Whispers of knowledge: ASR vs human performance in child transcription

Sarah Creel, Junrong Chen, Caroline Hall-Sherr, Carly Villongco, Sadrac Santacruzlbarra, Kaitlyn Chou

Accented sentence and word recognition: Humans versus Whisper automatic speech recognition

Junrong Chen, Jan Kwong, Sarah Creel

Accented sentence and word recognition: Humans versus Whisper automatic speech recognition

Junrong Chen, Jan Kwong, Sarah Creel

All publications