Irene Hou

About Irene Hou

Born in San Diego, California, Irene Hou grew up on a diet of thrifted paperback books. Her earliest memories are of her father at the kitchen table, highlighting his computer science textbook while struggling with two languages: English and Java. Irene’s parents emigrated from Changchun, China to San Diego, where they attended community college by day and bussed tables at night. As a family, they navigated education, health care, and public systems that were often difficult to access and not designed for the people most dependent on them. These experiences shaped Irene’s advocacy and research.

At fourteen, Irene published an award-winning science fiction and fantasy novel, Snowspirit: The Virgo Key. She founded Booknection, a writing camp for teen authors, and hosted workshops across California. The California Legislative Assembly recognized her for this work, and she went on to teach at local bilingual academies serving immigrant students.

Irene graduated cum laude from University of California, San Diego (UCSD), majoring in cognitive science (design and interaction specialization) and minoring in computer science. After university, she was the UX design lead at FluentPet before joining Stephen MacNeil’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab at Temple University. There, Irene led five undergraduate research teams studying the impact of generative AI on students and higher education.

Across five peer-reviewed publications and international talks, Irene’s research highlights that students are increasingly turning to AI for help instead of each other, shrinking opportunities for connection, particularly for underrepresented students. While AI lowers barriers to receiving answers, it can erode peer networks that carry mentorship and tacit knowledge. These findings challenge assumptions that access to AI alone leads to equitable outcomes. 

Currently, Irene is pursuing a cognitive science PhD at UCSD in Human-Centered AI and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), advised by Philip J. Guo in the Design Lab. She collaborates with Steven Dow’s ProtoLab at UCSD and April Yi Wang’s PEACH Lab at ETH Zurich to extend her work in participatory AI to other domains. Her publications have been accepted to ACM CHI, the premier international conference on HCI, and her research is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. As vice president of Graduate Women in Computing at UCSD, Irene builds pathways for marginalized students to participate in computing and technology. She aims to develop AI technologies that give people a meaningful voice in their design and use, while protecting human values and community ties.