Junheng (Elbert) Qian

I am currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, where I study how people make sense of technology, media, and AI in everyday life. While my training sits across HCI, communication, and computational social science, what really motivates me is a simple question: what do new systems actually feel like from the user's side?

Outside of formal research, I am someone who enjoys turning messy curiosities into something clearer and more structured. I like writing, building small digital things, and paying attention to how interfaces shape emotion, attention, and trust. That habit probably explains why I care as much about presentation and tone as I do about methods and results.

I have also found that some of my most valuable perspective comes from moving across disciplines and contexts, from information systems to communication, and from China to the United States. It has made me especially interested in translation: not only between languages, but also between fields, between technical systems and human experience, and between what a technology is designed to do and how people actually live with it.

In day-to-day life, I tend to appreciate things that are thoughtful, well-made, and a little understated. Music is one of the ways I reset and refocus, and I usually return to songs that feel precise, atmospheric, and emotionally durable. I want this site to reflect that same balance: professional, but still recognizably personal.