HwiJoon Lee

(he/him)

PhD Student

Joon Lee
  • Artificial intelligence  
  • Games  
  • Human–computer interaction 
  • BS in Computer Science (HCI concentration), Northeastern University 

HwiJoon Lee is a second-year PhD student in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, based in Boston. He is advised by Saiph Savage.

Lee's research sits at the intersection of games, HCI, and AI. He is interested in the barriers people face when entering complex systems — which he frames as "expertise asymmetry" — and in making games and AI easier to understand, learn, and explore.

Lee's recent work focuses on the people who help others navigate games. He is also studying how generative AI is reshaping gaming communities, and he has contributed to work on parole technology presented at FAccT. Additionally, his work with Savage appeared at CHI PLAY 2026.

Lee received his BS in Computer Science with a concentration in HCI from Northeastern, graduating cum laude. He worked on back-end development and game data analysis in Seoul, building data pipelines for player-facing analytics. He has also been a visiting researcher at KAIST, where he designed interactive tools for exploring multi-agent social simulations and collaborated on various research.

Outside of research, Lee is an avid gamer who likes digging into game data and systems to find insights that help new players learn complex games.