About - Jie (Sophia) Gao

Jie (Sophia) Gao

Many people don't know how to pronounce my name. Please call me Sophia to make your life easier!

Malone Postdoc Fellow
Johns Hopkins University

jgao77(at)jh.edu

Updates

2026.03 🎤 Gave a Claude Code How-To Session (Slides) for 40+ JHU researchers (Master's students, PhD students, postdocs, and faculty): covering practical usage and best practices of Claude Code and OpenClaw, provided live demos.
2025.12 🎉 Our paper on supporting developers in understanding new codebases has been accepted to the 34th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC 2026)! Check out the preprint: Understanding Codebase like a Professional! Human-AI Collaboration for Code Comprehension

▶ More

2025.11 ✈️ I attended EMNLP2025 in Suzhou, China. We presented our position paper, From Noise to Nuance: Enriching Subjective Data Annotation through Qualitative Analysis on generalizing qualitative data analysis to subjective data annotation domain.
2025.10 ✈️ I attended VL/HCC 2025 conference in North Carolina. Met new friends and had a great time!
2025.10 👩🏻‍💻 I am serving as an Associate Chair for CHI2026 under subcommittee Understanding People — Statistical and Quantitative Methods.
2025.05 ✈️ I attended CHI 2025 conference in Japan, and met a lot of old and new friends!
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.
2024.09 👩🏻‍💻 I am serving as an Associate Chair for CHI2025 under subcommittee "Understanding People — Statistical and Quantitative Methods" this year!
2024.05 ✈️ Attended CHI2024 and met old and new friends! I co-organized a workshop "LLMs as Research Tools".
2024.03 🎉 Our Late-breaking Work "A Taxonomy for Human-LLM Interaction Modes-An Initial Exploration" has been accepted to CHI 2024.
2024.03 We have launched CollabCoder Website. Construction and refinement is ongoing!
2024.01 🎉 One first-authored paper "CollabCoder" and one coauthored paper "Help Me Reflect" have been accepted to CHI2024! (Preprints will have minor refinements in final versions.)
2024.01 🚀 I successfully defended my PhD thesis titled "Tool Support for Human-AI Collaboration in Qualitative Data Analysis".
2023.12 🚀 We will organize a workshop "LLMs as Research Tools" at CHI2024, from 11-16 May 2024 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
2023.12 🚀 Starting from early 2024, I am excited to become a part of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology as a Postdoctoral Researcher, where I will be mentored by Prof. Thomas W. Malone. I'm thrilled about this opportunity!
2023.12 🚀 I attended EMNLP2023 at Singapore. Happy to learn many new things and friends!
2023.11 🚀 Presented CollabCoder project in the Immersive Reality Lab at NUS. Thanks for the invitation from Prof Khoo Eng Tat!
2023.10 🚀 Attended CSCW2023 and presented CollabCoder demo virtually! (due to visa and funding issues)
2023.08 🎉 One coauthored paper "GlassMessaging" has been accepted to Ubicomp2023!
2023.06 🎉 One coauthored paper has been accepted to ICSME2023!
2023.06 🎉 One coauthored paper "VISAR" has been accepted to UIST2023!
2023.06 🎉 One first-authored paper "CoAIcoder" has been accepted to TOCHI!
2023.06 🎉 Our "CollabCoder" platform has been selected for a demo work at CSCW2023!
2023.01 🚀 Excited to start as a visiting Ph.D. student at Notre Dame, working with Prof Toby's team!
2023.01 👩🏻‍💻 Work as an associate chair for the Late-Breaking Work Committee of CHI2023.
2022.06 🚀 Thrilled to begin as a visiting Ph.D. student at NUS-HCI lab, looking forward to collaborating with Prof Shen and the lab team!
2022.04 ✈️ Glad to attend CHI2022 in person in New Orleans, LA, USA. Thanks for the funding support from Simon.
2022.01 👩🏻‍💻 Worked as an associate chair for the Late-Breaking Work Committee of CHI2022.

Travels (Presenting)

ICLR 2026 Apr 23 – 27, 2026 · Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
ICSE/ICPC 2026 Apr 12 – 18, 2026 · Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

▶ Past

Jie (Sophia) Gao

Photo

Attending CHI in Japan, 2025.

A big horse I met when I was travelling in Hawaii, 2023.

A dog I met when I was walking beside the sea in Singapore, 2025.

The volcano I saw when I was travelling in Hawaii, 2023.

Hundreds of vessels racing on the sea in the Strait of Malacca ("马六甲海峡的百舸争流").

A fire show I saw in Thailand, 2022.

Cats

Meow! I am a smart cat.

Meow! I am a brave cat.