Chance Jiajie Li

Chance Jiajie Li is a Master’s student and Research Assistant at the City Science Group, MIT Media Lab. His research examines how computational systems—especially those at the intersection of AI, cognition, and social infrastructure—can support more adaptive, transparent, and equitable forms of urban organization.

His current work focuses on modeling the interplay between institutional structures and individual reasoning processes, using tools such as generative agents, decentralized architectures, and simulation. He is interested in how these systems can be used to trace public reasoning, inform policy, and prototype alternative civic futures.

Chance also explores long-term socio-technical frameworks—such as  Fuwang—that reimagine human agency, collective memory, and governance in digitally mediated societies. His work seeks to integrate reasoning architectures, distributed coordination, and urban systems into new mediums for collaborative sensemaking.

Prior to this, his work spanned urban sustainability research, decentralized systems, urban informatics and urban sensing—investigating how computation can mediate behavior and decision-making in cities. Before joining MIT, he received a B.Eng. in Computer Science from Tongji University, Shanghai.