Tong Chen

Tong Chen is a doctoral candidate in the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) at Rutgers University–Newark. His research integrates public administration, quantitative methods, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), with an emphasis on public corruption, nonprofit social media engagement, and AI governance. He develops innovative approaches to investigate underexplored areas of public administration by addressing data limitations in prior literature. His dissertation leverages artificial intelligence to construct a comprehensive dataset of over 2,000 U.S. public corruption cases from FBI disclosures, moving beyond the field’s traditional reliance on aggregated indices. Chen's nonprofit work focuses on the nonprofit’s communication strategy on social media and obtained access to Meta Platforms (Facebook and Instagram). His policy work categorizes emerging AI policies and applies institutional grammar theory to analyze patterns of policy diffusion, shedding light on the regulatory approaches shaping this evolving domain. He’s interested in applying emerging technologies in both teaching and academic research, such as robotic process automation, video editing, and analysis with AI.

Education

• MSc: Hult International Business School, Finance (2014)
• BS: Iowa State University, Finance (2013)
• BS: Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, China, Statistics (2012)