Harang Ju, PhD

Harang Ju is an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. His research focuses on human-Al collaboration and crypto, investigating how emerging technologies shape business and society.

Harang's current work explores how Al agents influence team dynamics and performance. In one line of research, he examines how personality pairing between humans and Al can improve team outcomes, offering insights into the design of collaborative Al systems. In a large-scale field experiment, he evaluates how Al agents affects productivity, performance, and teamwork. 

In parallel, his work on decentralized ecosystems investigates the persistence and evolution of decentralization in blockchains. He analyzes how technical features like consensus mechanisms influence decentralization over time. His research also engages with the economic models behind digital assets, such as resale royalties, to understand how decentralized platforms impact creator incentives and market dynamics.

Harang completed his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied the network dynamics of the brain and the evolution of human knowledge. He holds undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from the University of Virginia and was most recently a postdoctoral associate at the Initiative on the Digital Economy at MIT Sloan.

Education

• PHD, Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania
• BS, Computer Science, University of Virginia
• BA, Cognitive Science, University of Virginia

Research

Selected Publications

• H Ju, E Valavi, M Kumar, S Aral. Are Crypto Ecosystems (De)centralizing? A Framework for Longitudinal Analysis. Forthcoming in Communications of the ACM.

Working Papers

• H Ju, S Aral. Collaborating with Al Agents: Field Experiments on Teamwork, Productivity, and Performance.
• H Ju, S Aral. Human-Al Personality Pairing Improves Collaborative Performance
• MDS DiSorbo, H Ju, S Aral. Teaching Al to Handle Exceptions: Supervised Fine-Tuning with Human-Aligned Judgment.

Teaching

• Generative Al

Honor and distinctions

• Best Paper Award Nominee, Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE) 2023
• Advisor at Moku

In the media

• Al Agents Make Humans More Productive, MIT Researchers Say, Bloomberg Law (June 23, 2025)
• 4 new studies about agentic Al from the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Ideas Made to Matter, MIT Sloan (June 17, 2025)