Bryan Nathanael Wijaya
Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy
#CompSocSci 🦉 #AI4Good 🍀
#WellBeing 🐞 #PublicHealth 👩🏻⚕️
#AgenticAI 🤖 #MachBehavior🔬
Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy
#CompSocSci 🦉 #AI4Good 🍀
#WellBeing 🐞 #PublicHealth 👩🏻⚕️
#AgenticAI 🤖 #MachBehavior🔬
I am a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP), advised by Meeyoung Cha. 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 health. 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" is accepted in 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..." is accepted in 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.
2025.05 | I will be attending the CASA & RC Trust Summer School 2025 on AI and Security. See you in Bochum! 🇩🇪
Selected Publications
*Equal contribution
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
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 Institute 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! 🐣
MPI-SP, Universitätsstr. 140, 44799 Bochum, Germany
Email: bryan.wijaya@mpi-sp.org
Office: MB1/175
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