I am an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Lafayette College. I completed my baccalaureate degree in Computer Science and Engineering at Zhejiang University in China and earned my Ph.D in Computer Science at Iowa State University.

My primary research has long been Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KRR)—the study of how to represent information about the world in rigorous, formal frameworks, and to equip those frameworks with symbolic reasoning capabilities. This foundation in KRR has evolved into a sustained research program on responsibility in multi-agent decision-making. Using game-theoretic modeling and epistemic logic, I have examined how agents reason about knowledge, belief, and strategic interaction in settings where outcomes carry moral or social consequences. I have worked on formalizing notions such as blameworthiness, counterfactual and seeing-to-it responsibility, cognitive abilities, and preferences.

Recently, I have expanded this focus to responsible mechanism design, investigating how the structure of collective decision-making processes shapes the allocation of responsibility among participants. This includes, for example, studying responsibility gaps, where no single agent is individually accountable for the outcome, and responsibility diffusion, where shared decision-making obscures individual accountability.

Department of Computer Science
563 Rockwell Integrated Sciences Center (RISC)
Lafayette College
730 High St, Easton, PA 18042
Email: taoj at lafayette dot edu
Phone: (610) 330-3336