Bryan Nathanael Wijaya
Bryan Nathanael Wijaya
Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy
#ComputationalSocSci 🦉 #AI4Good 🍀 #WellBeing 🐞
#PublicHealth 👩🏻⚕️ #AgenticAI 🤖 #MachineBehavior🔬
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I am a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) and Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), advised by Meeyoung Cha and Jean-Louis van Gelder (MPI-CSL). I received my MS in Computer Science and BS in Electrical Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). I am currently interning remotely for the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA). Previously, I interned at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) and Daewoong Pharmaceutical in South Korea.
Research Interests
My research focuses on applied AI and computational social science for societal impact. I am interested in building data-driven, scalable, and human-centered AI systems to understand human and machine behavior and support decision-making in real-world settings, with applications across security and privacy in the generative AI era, well-being, and public health. I approach this through two aspects: (1) studying the characteristics, behaviors, and emergent (mis)alignments in human-agent and agent-agent interactions, and (2) building powerful and explainable representations to analyze the characteristics of individual physical and mental well-being. Previously, I also worked on generative AI methods for antigen-conditioned antibody design.
Recent News
2026.05 | "Textual Supervision Enhances Geospatial Representations in Vision-Language Models" has been accepted at ICML 2026. See you in Seoul! 🇰🇷
2026.04 | I will be attending Machine+Behavior Conference 2026. See you in Berlin! 🇩🇪
2026.03 | "Interpretable Machine Learning for Protein Science: Structure, Function, and Interactions" is out in ACM Computing Surveys.
2026.02 | I completed my master's at KAIST and will start my PhD at the MPI-SP from March. Super thrilled for my new journey!
2026.01 | "Longitudinal Identification of Critical Factors in Nurse Turnover..." has been accepted at HCI Korea 2026. See you in Hongcheon! 🇰🇷
2025.10 | I will be attending CIKM 2025 as a student volunteer. See you in Seoul! 🇰🇷
2025.09 | "Exploring the relationship between air quality and happiness in South Korea using artificial neural networks" is out in EIA Review.
2025.07 | "Artificial intelligence-driven computational methods for antibody design and optimization" is out in mAbs.
Selected Publications
*Equal contribution
Textual Supervision Enhances Geospatial Representations in Vision-Language Models
M. Sartori Locatelli, F. Tonucci, J. Kwon, L. F. Vecchietti, B. N. Wijaya, C. Y. Low, V. Almeida, and M. Cha
Proc. 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2026
Interpretable Machine Learning for Protein Science: Structure, Function, and Interactions
L. F. Vecchietti, M. Lee, B. Hangeldiyev, B. N. Wijaya, H. Jung, H. Park, T.-K. Kim, M. Cha, and H. M. Kim
ACM Computing Surveys (2026)
Artificial intelligence-driven computational methods for antibody design and optimization
L. F. Vecchietti*, B. N. Wijaya*, A. Armanuly, B. Hangeldiyev, H. Jung, S. Lee, M. Cha, and H. M. Kim
mAbs (2025)
Posters and Presentations
*Equal contribution | °Presenter
Self-Evolving Agents Should Build Internal and External Models of the World
L. F. Vecchietti, B. N. Wijaya°, W. Dong, and M. Cha
MPI-SP Retreat 2026, Meschede, Germany (2025.05)
Unveiling the Pregnancy and Health Trends of Nurses in South Korea: Analyzing and Modeling the Korea Nurses’ Health Study
B. N. Wijaya°, L. F. Vecchietti, S. Han, A. Cho, M. Cha, and C. Cha
CASA & RC Trust Summer School 2025, RUB, Bochum, Germany (2025.06)
MPI-SP Retreat 2025, Bad Breisig, Germany (2025.06)
The Paradox of Happiness
B. N. Wijaya*°, I. Kang*°, J. H. Jeung*°, K. Lee*°, and Y. Park*°
Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS) Korea 2024, KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea (2024.07)
Towards low-resource culture-aware harmful meme detection
B. N. Wijaya*°, L. F. Vecchietti*, C. Y. Low*, W. Dong, A. Zhunis, and M. Cha
AI & Data for Social Good Forum, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea (2024.05)
Feel free to say hi and connect with me anytime! 🐣
Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy
Universitätsstr. 140, 44799 Bochum, Germany
Email: bryan.wijaya@mpi-sp.org
Office: MB 1/175
Extra: TMI corner
I was a chemistry enthusiast, but everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
I am an ISTP, a mala and mint chocolate enthusiast, and I love my sugar gliders.
My hobbies are traveling 🏰, photography 📸, cooking 🥘, singing 🎤, visiting art museums 🏛️, and binge-watching 🍿
As a Chinese Indonesian, I also go by Zhixiong Huang (黃智雄), but 我不會中文 🥲
We might have crossed paths in one of these conferences/workshops: KIISE KSC 2023, ICML 2024, SICSS-Korea 2024, AOTULE 2024, WSDM 2025, CASA & RC Trust Summer School 2025, CIKM 2025, HCI Korea 2026, Ma+Be Conference 2026
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