Chen “Crystal” Chen, Ph.D. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Strategic Communication at the University of Miami School of Communication. She also serves as Research Chair for the Communication and Social Cognition Division of the National Communication Association.
When you delegate thinking to AI, what remains your own? When you feel “present” in a virtual world, is that experience real? Her research examines these questions at the intersection of immersive technologies and artificial intelligence, exploring how these experiences reshape communication and persuasion. Her work investigates how people outsource presence to virtual environments and delegate cognition and social connection to AI agents, exploring the cognitive illusions that emerge when technology mediates our reality. She employs in-person and quasi-experiments, behavioral measures, and computational modeling (including drift diffusion models) to address fundamental questions about decision-making, relationship formation, and persuasion in technologically mediated contexts. Her research has applications in healthcare, education, social inclusion, and consumer psychology. Her recent grant projects include: VR-based radiotherapy patient education and mental health intervention ($40,000; University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and XR Faculty Awards, 2024-2026) and AI-generated health misinformation and belief formation among young adults ($34,774; University of Miami Provost Grant, 2025-2026). She also has ongoing research investigating avatar embodiment and reward system influences on exercise efficacy in a virtual gym. Her recent theoretical efforts have focused on reconceptualizing the constructs of interactivity and immersion, exploring how we cognitively offload information search, evaluation, and decisions to external cognitive partners like Gen-AI, and how this can be applied in advertising and related fields.
She teaches courses bridging theory and practice across undergraduate and graduate levels, including Advertising Strategy Development (STC 200), Research Methods (STC 312), and Theories in Communication (STC 601). She developed and teaches AI-Powered Advertising and Consumer Experiences (STC 301), which covers topics such as chatbot development, virtual influencers, and AI in ethics, as well as the special topics course Innovation in Advertising (STC 490).