Who is Pan Chen?
I’m Pan Chen, a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Toronto. I work on language models, reasoning, and AI for science, and I also teach computer science courses.
This is my personal website and blog. I write about technology I use, life in Toronto, and small things I notice along the way. You can also find more about my research, industry experience, and teaching here.
I received U of T’s inaugural DCS Graduate Teaching Award in 2026. You can read feedback from my students on my teaching page.
Research Interests
Language Models and AI for Science
I study how language models learn from examples and use structured knowledge to reason about new problems. I am particularly interested in how these systems can support scientific discovery. You can find my current projects and publications on my research page.
Human-AI Interaction
I also work on tools that help people read, write, and learn with AI. My earlier work at U of T’s DGP lab supported adaptive experiments in computer science courses, as part of the team that won the XPRIZE Digital Learning Challenge.
My Blog
- A Wealthsimple Cashback Hack: Shopping Through the Rewards Store
- Borrowing a captioning device at a Canadian movie theatre
- My misuse of Apple Care+ for my iPhone
- Purchased an PS5 Slim for $16 Canadian Dollars
- Car was hit-and-run on Tuesday
- Post from the sky
- Freedom Mobile is good
- My website went down for about 12 hours due to a fire alarm in the LA’s data centre
- Agincourt go train station parking lot space availability
- Presto in Apple Wallet coming very soon?
- Migrating from Zoho Mail to iCloud+
- iOS 18 Beta new features that impress me
- Weird Forgot Password button in the Esso iOS App
- Not able to transfer my domain away from Squarespace – not able to receive transfer auth code
- Walmarts in the U.S. don’t accept tapping, including Apple Pay