Dr. Sean Ren

Associate Professor

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Biography

Xiang Ren is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California. He holds the Andrew Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair and is the Principal Investigator of the Intelligence Knowledge Discovery (INK) Research Lab. His research focuses on developing generalizable natural language processing (NLP) systems capable of handling a wide variety of language tasks and broadening the scope of model generality. Ren has worked extensively on creating new algorithms and datasets that improve the efficiency and reliability of NLP models while enhancing their transparency and user trust. In addition to his role at USC, he has served as a Data Science Advisor at Snapchat and has been affiliated with the NLP group at Stanford University. Ren's current research includes building evaluation methods to expose NLP systems to human reasoning scenarios and developing graph neural network methods for relational reasoning.

Research Interests

Awards

#2023

Outstanding Paper Award

2023-01-01
#2023

Okawa Research Grant

2023-01-01
#2022

Outstanding Paper Award

2022-01-01
#2022

Google Research Scholar Award

2022-01-01
#2022

Andrew Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair

2022-01-01
#2021

NSF CAREER Award

2021-01-01
#2020

Faculty Innovation Award

2020-01-01
#2020

Paper Award runner-up

2020-01-01
#2019

Faculty Research Award

2019-01-01
#2019

AI Research Award

2019-01-01
#2019

Faculty Research Award

2019-01-01
#2019

Data Science Research Award

2019-01-01
#2019

30 Under 30

2019-01-01
#2018

Doctoral Dissertation Award

2018-01-01
#2017

Google PhD Fellowship

2017-01-01

Requirements for University of Southern California

Master Program
Requirements
GPA Requirement
Required:3
TOEFL
Listening
Required:20
Reading
Required:20
Writing
Required:20
Speaking
Required:20
Total
Required:90
IELTS
Listening
Required:6
Reading
Required:6
Writing
Required:6
Speaking
Required:6
Overall
Required:6.5
GRE General
Prerequisites
Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Math, or Hard Science
Application Checklist
  • Online application
  • Official transcripts
  • Personal Statement
  • Resume/CV
  • Letters of Recommendation (not required for MS CS, but allowed)
Specialization Notes

GRE is NOT required for Master's applicants for 2025-2026.