Tianyi Li

Designing AI systems that work with people, not in place of them, to support learning, sensemaking, and decisions.

Tianyi Li is an Assistant Professor in the School of Applied and Creative Computing at Purdue University, where she directs the Co-Intelligence Lab. Her research in human–computer interaction asks how AI can strengthen people’s own judgment, learning, and participation.

She studies how people learn, make sense of information, and create technology in collaboration with AI. Her research asks how people can develop understanding and skills as AI takes on more of the work, evaluate AI-generated information and applications to inform their judgments, and participate in technology creation without formal technical training. She investigates these questions through human-centered and participatory design, interactive system development, and mixed-methods studies, including interviews, experiments, and field deployments. Across classrooms, workplaces, and communities, she examines how tools, learning experiences, and collaboration can help people use AI effectively and responsibly while retaining agency over their goals and decisions. Her work is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Indiana Department of Transportation.

Her research has been published in ACM TOCHI, ACM TiiS, CSCW, IUI, SIGCSE, and AIED. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech and a B.Eng. in Computer Science from the University of Hong Kong. Before joining Purdue, she was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Loyola University Chicago.