Research Areas

Track 01

Computational Social Work

I use data science, NLP, social network analysis, machine learning, and LLM-based methods to study social work, public health, and substance-use data. This track focuses on using computational methods to find patterns, generate evidence, and produce new insights from complex social data.

NLPSNAMachine LearningLLM MethodsPublic HealthSubstance Use
Track 02

Technology as Social Welfare Infrastructure

I study how AI and digital systems become part of social welfare practice, from secure data pipelines to theory, AI-assisted tools, and human oversight.

Social Welfare InfrastructurePublic Sector AIHuman ServicesChild WelfareAI Governance

Foundation

Infrastructure and Validation

Secure data preparation, de-identification, evaluation design, data protection, and production pipelines for AI systems in social service settings.

Secure DataDe-identificationData ProtectionEvaluation DesignProduction PipelineValidation

Theory

Socio-technical Systems Theory

Using socio-technical systems theory to study how workers, agencies, policies, and technical systems shape one another in social welfare practice.

Socio-technical TheoryHuman-Technology InteractionOrganizationsPolicy SystemsSocial Work Practice

Tools

Welfare Tools

AI-assisted tools for documentation review, policy alignment, caseworker support, and quality assurance. This includes my child welfare policy-alignment RAG system for CPS investigation notes.

Policy AlignmentRAGDocumentation ReviewCaseworker SupportQuality AssuranceChild Welfare

Oversight

Human-Centered Oversight

Studying how practitioners and supervisors review, question, evaluate, benchmark, and govern AI outputs in high-stakes public systems. This includes human-in-the-loop and human-on-the-loop oversight, as well as evaluation protocols that test whether AI systems are accurate, useful, and safe for social welfare practice.

Human OversightHuman-in-the-LoopHuman-on-the-LoopBenchmarkingEvaluationAI Governance

Publications & Working Papers

In Submission

Searching the Literature by Meaning: Benchmarking Free and Commercial Word Embedding Models on Social Work Text

Perron, B. E., Wang, M., Deng, N., & Ahn, E.

2021 Published

Applying statistical machine learning methods to analyze differences in the severity level of COVID-19 among countries

Yin, W., Pan, C., Deng, N., & Ji, D. · Journal of Software, 16(5), 219–234

2020 Published

Application of social network analysis of COVID-19 related tweets mentioning cannabis and opioids to gain insights for drug abuse research

Yoon, S., Odlum, M., Broadwell, P., Davis, N., Cho, H., Deng, N., Patrao, M., et al. · In The Importance of Health Informatics in Public Health during a Pandemic, 5–8