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General Information

Full Name Xuanjun (Jason) Gong
Email Address xjgong@ucdavis.edu
Address 167 Kerr Hall, Davis, CA, 95616

Education

  • 2019 - 2024
    PhD in Communication
    University of California, Davis, United States
    • PI Richard Huskey
    • Dissertation
      • Dynamic Computational Modeling of Sequential Media Selection
  • 2021 - 2023
    MS in Statistics
    University of California, Davis, United States
    • Advisor Shizhe Chen
  • 2017 - 2019
    MS in Advertising
    University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, United States
    • Advisor Brittany Duff
    • Thesis
      • An exploration account of media multitasking
  • 2013-2017
    BA in Advertising
    Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China

Experience

  • 2019-Now
    Graduate Student Researcher
    Department of Communication, UC, Davis
    • Conduct research projects.
    • Data management, statistical analysis, code review.
    • Grant writing and project management.
  • 2020-Now
    Teaching Assistant
    Department of Communication, UC, Davis
    • Assisting course instructors for material preparation and lectures delivery.
    • Deliver lectures, discussion sessions, lab sessions.
    • Answering questions and host office hours.
  • 2022
    Instructor
    Department of Communication, UC, Davis
    • CMN 001 Public Speaking
    • Prepare course materials including lectures, exams, homeworks.
    • Deliver lectures, discussion sessions, lab sessions.
    • Answering questions and host office hours.
  • 2022
    Data Scientist Intern
    Uber HK
    • Daily taxi demand prediction using taxi order data with geolocation/weather data.
    • Hyper-tuned and compared Tree Models (GBRegression and XGB) and sequence models (RNN, LSTM, GRU).
    • Applied K-means and DBSCAN clustering algorithms to find out high-value orders.

Honors and Awards

  • 2023
    • Top Paper Award
    • International Communication Association - Communication Science and Biology
    • Gong, X. & Huskey, R. (2023). Media selection is highly predictable, In principle.
  • 2021
    • Top Paper Award
    • National Communication Association Annual Conference
    • Gong, X. & Huskey, R. (2021). People Prefer Negatively-Valenced Movies in a Two-Alternative Movie Decision Task.
  • 2021
    • Graduate Student Reward
    • Cognitive Neuroscience Society
    • Gong, X. & Huskey, R. (March, 2021). Fronto-Parietal and Reward Networks are Integrated During the Psychological State of Flow.
  • 2021
    • Top 5 Paper award
    • International Communication Association
    • Huskey, R., Keene, J., Wilcox, S., Gong X., Adams, R. & Najera, C. (May, 2021) Flexible and Modular Brain Network Dynamics Characterize Flow Experiences During Media Use.
  • 2020
    • Small Research Grant
    • Department of Communication at UC, Davis
    • PI Richard Huskey

Academic Interests

  • Media Selection.
    • Computational modeling empirical media selection behaviors.
    • Behavioral experimentation for testing media selection theories.
  • Information Diffusion.
    • Network analysis on empirical social media diffusion data.
    • Computational simulation of duffusion.
  • NLP Narratives.
    • Using NLP techniques to understand narrative structures.
    • Understand how narratives influence media effects.

Other Interests

  • Hobbies: Hiking, Ski, Watch Movies/TV shows.