Ph.D., Associate Research Fellow, Shanghai International College of Design and Innovation

Master's Supervisor
Assistant Editor, She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation

Brief Introduction

Tao Shen is an Associate Research Fellow and Master's Supervisor at Shanghai International College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University. He also serves as Assistant Editor of She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation and as a member of the Technical Committee on Human-Computer Interaction of the China Computer Federation (CCF). He holds a Ph.D. in Knowledge Science from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. His interdisciplinary research spans intelligent design, urban health science, and sustainable communities. He draws on artificial intelligence, computer vision, and cognitive science to investigate how the built environment influences residents' health and well-being and to study data-driven intelligent design support systems. In recent years, he has led several research projects funded by the Ministry of Education and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation. He has published more than 60 academic papers in international journals, including Design Studies, Design Science, Cities, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, npj Heritage Science, and Automation in Construction. His awards include the Outstanding Design Research Award from the Japanese Society for the Science of Design and the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Design Creativity.

Research

Urban health interaction design

sustainable communities

cognitive science

computer-aided design

Teaching

Doctoral course: Quantitative Research Methods

Master's course: Topics in Design Research 2 (Quantitative Methods and Writing)

Academic and social Post

Member, Technical Committee on Human-Computer Interaction, China Computer Federation (CCF)

Area Editor, International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems
Co-Chair, International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCII)

Member, Design Society

Education Background
2017.10-2019.12  Ph.D. in Knowledge Science, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
2015.10-2017.09  M.S. in Knowledge Science, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Work Experience

2026.09–present  Associate Research Fellow, Shanghai International College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University

2023.05–2026.09  Assistant Research Fellow, Shanghai International College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University
2020.03–2023.04  Postdoctoral Researcher, College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University
2016.07–2019.10  Research Assistant, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Design
[1] 2024–2027  Ministry of Education Industry-University Collaborative Education Project: Empirical Research Methods in Design Studies (Principal Investigator)

[2] 2023–2026  Ministry of Education Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Fund Project: Configurational Pathways and Design Optimization for Enhancing Older Adults’ Well-Being through Public Spaces in Older Neighborhoods (Principal Investigator)
[3] 2022–2023  2022 Project of the Innovative Design and Intelligent Manufacturing Discipline Cluster: Spatiotemporal Analysis of Residents’ Multimodal Behavior across Multiple Settings in Smart Sustainable Communities (Principal Investigator)
[4] 2020–2023  China Postdoctoral Science Foundation General Program: A Design Support System for Sustainable Community Catalysts Based on Agent–Interaction–Adaptation Design Thinking (Principal Investigator)
[5] 2023–2026  Liaoning Province Key Social Science Research Project: Pathways for the Digital and Intelligent Transformation and Upgrading of Liaoning’s Fashion Industry Driven by Generative Artificial Intelligence (Co-Principal Investigator, ranked second)
[6] 2020–2023  Liaoning Province Social Science Foundation 2020 General Project: Pathways for the Transformation and Upgrading of Traditional Cultural Industries in Liaoning Driven by Artificial Intelligence and Design Innovation (Co-Principal Investigator, ranked second)

Publications

Papers as first or corresponding author  

[1] Zhang, M., Li, Q., Li, Y., Lou, Y., & Shen, T. (2026). Emergent social landscapes: Behavior-driven networks unveiling latent interaction structures among urban POI clusters. Cities, 175, 107188.

[2] Shen, T., Li, Y., Zhang, M., Li, Q., Akbar, A., Mo, J., ... & Lou, Y. (2026). A semantic-geometric digital twin framework for performance-driven design evaluation: methodology and application to civil aircraft cabins. Research in Engineering Design, 37(2), 15.

[3] Zhang, M., Wu, Y., Li, Q., Cao, P., & Shen, T. (2026). Disentangling nonlinear and context-contingent built environment effects on social encounter opportunities: Evidence from explainable spatial machine learning in 15-min community life circles. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 130, 102514.

[4] Zhang, M., Lao, Q., Li, Q., Ji, D., Shen, T., & Lou, Y. (2025). Boundary spanners in co-design networks: Modulating tension and structuring informal power. Design Studies, 101, 101358.

[5] Li, Y., Liu, C., Lou, Y., Shen, T., Wu, Y., Guo, J., Li, Y., & Zhang, M. (2025). Integrating colored LiDAR and YOLO semantic segmentation for design feature extraction in Chinese ancient architecture. npj Heritage Science, 13(1), 316.

[6] Gao, C., Zhao, G., Gao, S., Du, S., Kim, E., & Shen, T. (2025). Cross-cultural insights into traditional Jiangnan gardens of China and Japanese gardens through algorithm-enhanced comparative analysis. npj Heritage Science, 13(1), 315.

[7] Zhang, M., Shen, T., Li, Y., Li, Q., & Lou, Y. (2025). Exploring the complex associations between community public spaces and healthy aging: an explainable analysis using catboost and SHAP. BMC Public Health, 25(1), 2200.

[8] Jiang, C., Huang, R., & Shen, T. (2025). Generative AI-Enabled Conceptualization: Charting ChatGPT's Impacts on Sustainable Service Design Thinking With Network-Based Cognitive Maps. Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering, 25(2), 021006.

[9] Shen, T., Li, Y., Lou, Y., Liu, C., Ji, D., Zhang, M., & Li, Y. (2025). Measuring joint attention in co-creation through automatic human activity recognition. Design Science, 11, e33.

[10] Gao, C., Zhao, G., Gao, S., Du, S., Kim, E., & Shen, T. (2024). Advancing architectural heritage: precision decoding of East Asian timber structures from Tang dynasty to traditional Japan. Heritage Science, 12(1), 219.

[11] Shen, T., Zhang, M., & Wu, T. (2024). Emotion-driven action interaction design in small quadruped robots: leveraging NXEIK multilevel network. Journal of Engineering Design, 1–36.

[12] Li, Y., Xiao, Z., Li, J., & Shen, T. (2024). Integrating vision and laser point cloud data for shield tunnel digital twin modeling. Automation in Construction, 157, 105180.

[13] Gao, C., Zhang, Q., Tan, Z., Zhao, G., Gao, S., Eunyoung, K., & Shen, T. (2024). Applying optimized YOLOv8 for heritage conservation: enhanced object detection in Jiangnan traditional private gardens. Heritage Science, 12, 31.

[14] Liu, C., Li, Y., Gu, J., Lou, Y., & Shen, T. (2023). Enhancing Pedestrian Target Recognition in Open Community Multi-Scene Spaces Using the Yolo-STP Network. ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, 10, 319–328.

[15] Shen, T., Gao, C., & Xu, D. (2020). The analysis of intelligent real-time image recognition technology based on mobile edge computing and deep learning. Journal of Real-Time Image Processing, 1–10.

[16] Shen, T., Nagai, Y., & Gao, C. (2019). Design of building construction safety prediction model based on optimized BP neural network algorithm. Soft Computing, 1–12.

[17] Shen, T., & Nagai, Y. (2018). Effects of Unfolding Techniques as Design Stimuli in Building Design. In DS 89: Proceedings of The Fifth International Conference on Design Creativity (ICDC 2018), University of Bath, Bath, UK (pp. 15–22).

[18] Yoshida, T., Nagai, Y., Shen, T., & Kosugi, A. (2016). Design of the tea house with wood lattice. In Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for the Science of Design (p. 87). Japanese Society for the Science of Design. [In Japanese]

Honors and Awards
[1] 2019  Outstanding Design Research Award, Japan Society for the Science of Design (JSSD)
[2] 2018  Best Paper Award, International Conference on Design Creativity (ICDC)

Contact
Email: shentao@tongji.edu.cn