I am a first-year PhD student in Computer Science at Princeton University advised by Prof. Manoel Horta Ribeiro and Prof. Andrés Monroy-Hernández. My research sits at the intersection of human-centered AI (HAI), human-computer interaction (HCI), and computational social science (CSS).

I study how AI shapes people’s attitudes, behaviors, and participation in everyday activities, and how we can design AI systems that better support human agency. I explore these directions across a range of domains, including online communities, education, and social media. My work often combines qualitative, quantitative, and technical approaches, including field experiments, mixed-methods studies, and the design and evaluation of interactive systems.

Beyond my primary research, I am passionate about teaching and mentorship, and occasionally contribute to CS education research, particularly around AI in education, proof education, and learning technologies.

Email | CV | LinkedIn | OrcID | Google Scholar

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Publications

Manuscripts

• “Okay, I’ve Actually Softened My Take on This”: How People in Decentralized Social Media Reason about the Appropriateness of Generative AI.
  Romina Mahinpei, Manoel Horta Ribeiro, Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Sohyeon Hwang
  Under review · [Preprint]
  

• AI Assistance for Discretionary Work: Increasing Feedback Provision in Higher Education
  Romina Mahinpei, Victoria Dean, Ruth Fong, Lydia T. Liu, Manoel Horta Ribeiro
  Under review · [Preprint] · [Code]
  

Conference Papers

• Performance and Start-Time Trends in Asynchronous Computer-Based Assessments
  Irix Xu*, Romina Mahinpei*, Steven Wolfman, Firas Moosvi
  SIGCSE TS 2026 · [Paper]
  

• Interactive Theorem Provers for Proof Education
  Romina Mahinpei, Manoel Horta Ribeiro, Mae Milano
  SPLASH-E 2025 · [Paper] · [Code]
  

• An Emergent Bottom-Up Categorization of Students’ LLMs Usage in an Undergraduate Research Course
  Ivan Orozco Vasquez*, Romina Mahinpei*, Noureddine Elouazizi, Cristina Conati
  AIED 2025 · [Paper]
  

• A Generalized Framework for Describing Question Randomization
  Romina Mahinpei*, Iris Xu*, Steven Wolfman, Firas Moosvi
  ICER 2025 · [Paper]
  

Posters & Workshop Papers

• How Children Collaborate within Programmable AR Environments with Co-Located Collaborative Features
  Romina Mahinpei, Diya Ajay Hundiwala, Sandy Zhang, Lana Glisic, Andrés Monroy-Hernández CSCW 2026 · [Poster]
  

• AI Assistance for Discretionary Work: Increasing Feedback Provision in Higher Education
  Romina Mahinpei, Victoria Dean, Ruth Fong, Manoel Horta Ribeiro
  IC2S2 2026 (non-archival presentation)
  

• CNPE: A Framework for Challenges and Needs in Proof Education
  Romina Mahinpei, Sofiia Druchyna, Xinran Bi
  SIGCSE TS 2026 · [Poster]
  

• Characterizing the Relationship Between Generative AI, Student Behavior, and Learning Outcomes in Upper-Level CS Education: A Case Study in an Undergraduate Machine Learning Course
  Anha Khan, Romina Mahinpei, Maryam Hedayati, Victoria Dean, Ruth Fong
  SIGCSE TS 2026 · [Poster]
  

• Provenance Design and Evolution in a Production ML Library
  Adam Craig Pocock, Joseph Wonsil, Romina Mahinpei, Jack Sullivan, Margo Seltzer
  CODEML @ ICML 2025 · [Workshop Paper] · [Code] · [Tutorial]

• A Generalized Framework for Describing Question Randomization
  Romina Mahinpei*, Iris Xu*, Steven Wolfman, Firas Moosvi
  SIGCSE TS 2024 · [Poster] · [Code] · [Video]
  

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Teaching

I’ve had the pleasure of being a teaching assistant for the following courses:

• COS 598D Empirical Research Methods in CS, Princeton (2026)
• COS 324 Introduction to Machine Learning, Princeton (2024-2025)
• CPSC 313 Hardware & Operating Systems, UBC (2023-2024)
• CPSC 210 Software Construction & Development, UBC (2022-2023)
• Science One Differential & Integral Calculus, UBC (2021-2022)