Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang

Assistant Professor of Communication & Computer Science, USC
Visiting Research Scholar, Princeton CITP
Research Fellow, Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University

Hi there! I am a human-AI interaction (HAII) researcher and an Assistant Professor of Communication and Computer Science at USC. I am also Associate Director and core faculty member at USC Center for AI in Society. My research explores how AI impacts social dynamics in individuals' professional and personal lives --- as well as their broader societal implications.

Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell's Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and a Research Scientist at Sony AI. I received my PhD in Communication with a Concentration in Human-Computer Interaction at Cornell University. Throughout my PhD journey, I was fortunate to work at Microsoft Research, Google Research, Sony AI, Adobe, Accenture Labs, and Cornell Center for Social Sciences through various internships, fellowships, and PhD scholar programs.

I am always on the lookout for thought-provoking collaborators to work with. If you find anything interesting on this page, let's get in touch :)

CV Google Scholar angel.hwang [at] usc [dot] edu

For students interested in working with me: Thank you for your interest! You can directly apply to either the Comm or CS PhD program at USC. If you are looking for short-term research opportunity, please fill out this form before reaching out.

Research

I direct the Human-AI Ecosystem (HAE!) Lab at USC, where a group of interdisciplinary researchers research, design, and build AI-powered technologies that account for humans' complex social dynamics and empower users in their situated ecosystems (e.g., professional domains, healthcare systems, and social networks). Here are some of the key projects that we work on at the moment:

Companion AI that connects users back to their support networks: Companionship is now one of the most common uses of generative AI. How do such AI uses become detrimental, and when do human interventions become necessary? Ultimately, how do we disengage users from harmful reliance on AI and reconnect them to existing human support within their personal and healthcare networks?
AI teammates that support positive group dynamics: AI now holds the agency not only to facilitate but also to participate in teams and groups. How do AI agents steer social interactions in groups and teams? How do we design agents that are more socially aware and support positive dynamics?
Collaborative AI tools that foreground human expertise: AI assistance at work holds unprecedented potential to democratize expertise across domains. How do we design AI tools that empower users while spotlighting the value of human work? How should workflows and AI use policies be framed to support this goal?

By keywords, here are some of the subjects that best capture the lab's interests:
#   human-AI collaboration
#   human-agent teamwork
#   societal impact of AI + scalable methods for HAII research
#   digital mental health
#   future of work

The lab is grateful for support from Google Research, Amazon Science, OORI, Slack, USC Annenberg, and USC Center on Generative AI & Society.

Latest News

10/2026 Attending and organizing two workshops at CSCW'26, one on PosiTech and one on Broader Impacts of GenAI in Communication.

10/2026 Attending and speaking at Stanford's Trust and Safety Research Conference.

09/2026 Attending and speaking at the Human-AI Complementarity Workshop hosted by NSF AI Institute for Societal Decision Making.

09/2026 Starting my fellowshops at Princeton CITP and Harvard BKC!! Glad to be back on the East Coast :)

06/2026 Our AI Disclosure Workshop returns to FAccT 2026! Check out a recap of all the inspiring output from the workshop here.

06/2026 Speaking at Society for Digital Mental Health Annual Meeting about our work on AI companions and wellbeing.

06/2026 So honored to receive Best Paper Award at ICA this year! Shout-out to Chang Wan as student lead of the paper 🏆

05/2026 Honored to speak as keynote at UC Davis' Comm Horizons Conference

05/2026 Honored to speak as keynote at the International Workshop on Cyber Social Threats (CySoc) at ICWSM 2026.

05/2026 Pleased to be back at Cornell to attend the Community-Centered AI Summit 🐻

04/2026 Attending CHI'2026 in Barcelona 🇪🇸 Excited to share our latest papers on responsible design of AI applications for mental health and wellbeing, digital companionship, and AI disclosure among freelance workers. Delighted to receive Best Paper Honorable Mentions for our work 🏆

04/2026 CounselBench is out at ICLR for 🌟Oral Presentation🌟 (top 1% of all submissions)! Shout-out to Yahan Li as the student lead of this project, and come see the talk in Rio de Janeiro 🇧🇷

02/2026 Thrilled to receive a grant from the OORI Research Catalyst Program to support our work on democratizing LLM for algorithmic decision-making! Tripple congrats to my collaborators, Phebe Vayanos, Jieyu Zhao, and Peter Phung!

02/2026 Invited to attend CRA's Early Career Mentoring Workshop in DC.

01/2026 Looking forward to visitiing UCLA to give a colloquium talk!

11/2025 Grateful to receive support from Amazon Science with Jieyu Zhao to research culturally aware AI in digital mental healthcare!

10/2025 Honored to receive Google's Academic Research Award!! Along with Munmun De Choudhury, we will work on idnetifying criticial cues that signals harmful interactions between users and AI companions and needs for human interventions.