Education
Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
M.S. in Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
B.A. in Music Technology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
B.S. in Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Dr. Dachun Sun is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Computer Science Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where his work centers on understanding polarization in online communities, integrating graph neural networks, large language models (LLMs), and retrieval-augmented generation to detect ideological positions and model community responses to events. Dachun's work has been applied and utilized in funded research projects to detect influence campaigns and support crisis response planning. In addition to further advancing those in computational social science, he is trying to apply the techniques to computer science education. He is particularly passionate about effectively integrating LLMs and raising critical awareness of their impacts within existing or new courses. He looks forward to contributing to both teaching and research at WPI and supporting an inclusive and collaborative academic environment.

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Education
Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
M.S. in Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
B.A. in Music Technology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
B.S. in Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Dr. Dachun Sun is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Computer Science Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where his work centers on understanding polarization in online communities, integrating graph neural networks, large language models (LLMs), and retrieval-augmented generation to detect ideological positions and model community responses to events. Dachun's work has been applied and utilized in funded research projects to detect influence campaigns and support crisis response planning. In addition to further advancing those in computational social science, he is trying to apply the techniques to computer science education. He is particularly passionate about effectively integrating LLMs and raising critical awareness of their impacts within existing or new courses. He looks forward to contributing to both teaching and research at WPI and supporting an inclusive and collaborative academic environment.

Office
Unity Hall 452