cv

General Information

Full Name Yong Jin (Jina) Chun
Email chunyj@uci.edu
Location Irvine, California, US

Education

  • Present
    Ph.D. in Software Engineering
    University of California, Irvine
    • Advisor: Professor Iftekhar Ahmed
    • GPA: 4.0/4.0
  • Sept 2025
    M.S. in Software Engineering
    University of California, Irvine
    • Advisor: Professor Iftekhar Ahmed
    • GPA: 4.0/4.0
    • Dissertation: Multi-Agent Debate for Advancing Agentic Software Development
  • May 2021
    B.S. in Computer Science
    Boston University
    • Cum Laude; Dean’s Honor List
    • GPA: 3.6/4.0

Experience

  • June – Sept 2026
    PhD Research Intern
    Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA
    • Mentors: Christian Bird, Carmen Badea
    • Designed a working-knowledge memory system that integrates across agent sessions to enable contextual retrieval throughout the development lifecycle.
    • Explored indexing, retrieval, and privacy-aware redaction strategies to strengthen agent-assisted software engineering workflows.
  • Present
    Research Assistant
    STAIRS Lab, University of California, Irvine
    • Led research projects and publications on Agentic AI and multi-agent systems, focusing on agent collaboration, communication, and reasoning.
    • Developed and evaluated multi-agent debate frameworks to analyze agent interactions and improve LLM performance across software engineering tasks.
    • Investigated communication and information exchange in multi-agent systems, characterizing how agents share and use information during collaborative problem solving.
    • Conducted large-scale empirical analyses of prompting techniques across diverse software engineering tasks to identify factors influencing LLM effectiveness.
  • Jan – Apr 2020
    Data Science Intern
    Orion Health, Auckland, New Zealand
    • Analyzed data annotation strategies to improve accuracy and efficiency in clinical data processing.
    • Built an NLP-based annotation tool for clinical data.
  • Jun – Aug 2019
    Software Engineering Intern
    Parasoft Southeast Asia, Singapore
    • Investigated automated software testing products to identify software quality issues.
    • Designed and implemented UI improvements based on findings.

Skills

  • Research
    • NLP, Large Language Models, Multi-Agent Systems, Agentic Memory Systems, Fine-tuning, Prompt Engineering, Model Training
    • Model Context Protocol (MCP), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Context Engineering
    • Developer Productivity Tools, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
    • Software Testing (JUnit, PyTest)
    • Machine Learning, Neural Networks
    • Dataset Curation & Labeling, Topic Modeling
    • Literature Review, Empirical Research, Qualitative & Statistical Analysis, Human Subjects Research
  • Programming & Frameworks
    • Java, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js, HTML/CSS, Django, React, Bootstrap
  • ML/AI Frameworks
    • PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain, scikit-learn, Hugging Face Transformers, OpenAI API
  • Data Analysis
    • Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib, Seaborn, SQL, Data Visualization
  • Tools & Platforms
    • Git, GitHub, Docker, Heroku, Linux, VS Code, Jupyter, Conda, Bash

Projects

  • AI-Driven Mental Health Counseling
    • Investigated whether open-source LLMs can replicate human counselor linguistic patterns.
    • Applied multiple NLP techniques to compare AI vs. human counseling responses.
    GitHub
  • Culture Explorer — Responsive Web Platform for Cultural Discovery
    • Built a responsive website showcasing global destinations and cultural experiences.
    • Implemented interactive gallery and destination pages optimized for responsiveness and usability.
    GitHub
  • DineLog — Interactive Food Review & Sharing Web Platform
    • Developed a full-stack Django application with authentication, CRUD, and media uploads.
    • Packaged Heroku-ready configuration; includes demonstration video.
    GitHub

Professional Service

  • Apr 2025
    Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Reliability
  • Apr 2024
    Reviewer, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM)
  • Jul 2025
    Reviewer, Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE)

Awards and Honors

  • Sept 2023
    Chair’s Award
    Donald Bren School of ICS, University of California, Irvine
    • Awarded upon admission to the Ph.D. program in recognition of exceptional potential for research contributions.
  • Jun 2021
    Cum Laude
    Boston University, College of Arts & Sciences
  • 2017 – 2021
    Dean’s List
    Boston University, College of Arts & Sciences

Mentorship

  • 2023 – Ongoing
    Mentor, ICS Honors Program
    University of California, Irvine
  • 2023 – Ongoing
    Mentor, Graduate International Connection Program
    University of California, Irvine
  • 2017 – 2021
    International Peer Mentor Program
    Boston University