Zhuoran (Elara) Liu

I am Elara Liu, an incoming first-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Informatics at Emory University. I previously earned dual B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Informatics from UC Irvine and M.S. in Computer Science from Northwestern University advised by Haoqi Zhang and Karan Ahuja. I build end-to-end interactive systems across interfaces, data pipelines, and evaluation, with an emphasis on human issues, user context, and real-world constraints.

My research sits at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Health Informatics, and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). I study how human-centered intelligent systems can support collaborative decision-making in everyday health, especially when information is partial, values are contested, and stakes are high. My work focuses on making agentic AI systems more transparent and value-aligned, helping patients and clinicians develop shared understanding from fragmented perspectives, and reducing the cognitive load of health technologies for users with diverse needs and levels of literacy.