Hancheng Cao

Hancheng Cao is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management and Assistant Professor of Computer Science (by courtesy) at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, with a courtesy appointment as Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Emory College of Arts and Sciences. He is the inaugural JPMorgan Chase Scholar at Goizueta Business School.

His research examines how emerging information technologies—with generative AI as a recent primary focus—are reshaping work and organizations. He studies how individuals, teams, and organizations adopt and adapt to AI as it transforms identities, roles, workflows, and decision-making, and the broader implications of these changes for the future of work. In parallel, he designs and builds AI agents that augment human judgment and enable more adaptive and collaborative forms of work.

His research has appeared in interdisciplinary and disciplinary journals including New England Journal of Medicine AI, Nature Human Behavior, Cell Patterns, American Sociological Review, and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, as well as computer science conferences spanning artificial intelligence, human–computer interaction, and natural language processing, including CHI, CSCW, EMNLP, ICML, and NeurIPS. His work has received multiple awards at leading venues, including a Best Paper Award at CHI 2023, Honorable Mention Awards at CHI 2021 and CSCW 2020, a Senior Area Chair Highlight at EMNLP 2025 (top ~0.5% of 8,000+ submissions), selection for Cell Patterns’ Editors’ Picks: Best of 2025, and an ICML 2024 Oral Presentation (top ~1.5% of 9,000+ submissions). His research and perspectives have been featured in The New York Times, Wired, Forbes, MIT Technology Review, The Economist, Inc., New Scientist, and TED.

He has conducted research at Microsoft and the Allen Institute for AI, and collaborates with industry partners including Asana and technology startups. He is also a founding member of the Work AI Institute, an industry–academic initiative powered by Glean focused on AI and the future of work.

He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, with a minor in Management Science and Engineering, and holds a bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University. Prior to joining Emory, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft’s Office of Applied Research.