I am currently a Malone Postdoc Fellow in Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare & Department Computer Science at The Johns Hopkins University, starting March 2025. I am mentored by an interdisciplinary team of NLP and HCI, including Mark Dredze, Ziang Xiao, and Chien-Ming Huang. My research interests include Human-AI Collaboration, AI for Social Science and AI for Software Engineering. More specifically, my research focuses on building, theorizing and evaluating AI innovative software/tools, particularly in qualitative analysis area.
2025.04 🌟 We introduce mindcoder.ai, a web application designed to support automated qualitative analysis. The user only needs to follow three steps to obtain qualitative analysis results-1) upload data, 2) start coding, and 3) get analysis report! See how to use-video.
2025.03 🚀 Started my postdoc fellowship at Johns Hopkins University!
2024.12 🚀 I will join the Malone postdoctoral fellow program at Johns Hopkins University next March! I will be working with Mark Dredze, Ziang Xiao and Chien-Ming Huang to explore the potential of LLM in qualitative analysis methodology usage in healthcare.
I explored a few new topics last year, including 1) MindCoder, 2) the full extension of Human-LLM interaction modes, and 3) CodeMap, a tool designed for code understanding. In particular, one of our most excited works has provided a functional tool named MindCoder, which supports automated qualitative coding within 3–5 minutes. You can access it via mindcoder.ai.
A Taxonomy for Human-LLM Interaction Modes
Jie Gao, Erika Lee, Zhiyao Shu, Michelle Vaccaro, Xiaoxian Zhang, Junming Cao, Thomas Malone
Under Review 2025 PaperChain of Understanding: Supporting Code Understanding with Large Language Models
Jie Gao, Yue Xue, Xiaofei Xie, SoeMin Thant, Erika Lee
Under Review 2025 Paper*Co-first author.
To simplify the reading, I've listed only my main contributions. For a full list and the latest version of my publications, please visit my Google Scholar !
📚 Theorizing the development of innovative software and tools (More to come):
A Taxonomy for Human-LLM Interaction Modes: An Initial Exploration
Jie Gao*, Simret Araya Gebreegziabher*, Kenny Tsu Wei Choo, Toby Jia-Jun Li, Simon Tangi Perrault, Thomas W. Malone
CHI LBW 2024 Human-LLM Interaction Paper🌟 Building novel software for AI-assisted (LLM-powered) qualitative data analysis, writing and online reflection:
If you're interested in the development of this line of research, I suggest reviewing the development history of CollabCoder. To gain a full understanding of why I started working on this topic since 2021, I invite you to check the Section 2: Choice of Research Topic of my PhD thesis.
CoAIcoder: Examining the Effectiveness of AI-assisted Human-to-Human Collaboration in Qualitative Analysis.
Jie Gao, Kenny Tsu Wei Choo, Junming Cao, Roy Ka Wei Lee, Simon Perrault.
TOCHI 2023 AI4SocialScience PaperI am thrilled to be part of my colleagues' LLM projects and have gained valuable insights from our collaboration!
Help Me Reflect: Leveraging Self-Reflection Interface Nudges to Enhance Deliberativeness on Online Deliberation Platforms
Shun Yi Yeo, Gionnieve Lim, Jie Gao, Weiyu Zhang, Simon Tangi Perrault
CHI 2024 Paper