Hello, my name is Kevin Michael Chen, also known as “Acicula” Chen and 陳啟文 (Chen Chi-wen). I am currently a Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University, advised by Dr. Anish Arora.
My research interests are driven by a fundamental question: How do learned models work internally to produce the behaviors we observe? I am particularly interested in mechanistic interpretability, especially as it relates to physical world models and cross-modal generative AI.
Beyond academia, I am a self-taught guitarist with over a decade of experience, drawing much of my inspiration from John Mayer's early acoustic work, particularly Inside Wants Out and Room for Squares. Check out my JM covers here.
I was born in Seattle and spent most of my life in Taiwan. I have since returned to the U.S. to pursue my Ph.D.
Kevin M. Chen, Kenneth W. Parker, and Anish Arora
2026, IEEE Radar Conference, (RadarConf 2026)
Kevin M. Chen, Kenneth W. Parker, and Anish Arora
2026, 59th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, (HICSS-59 2026)
This guitar was luckily found and purchased through a friend (also a big fan of John Mayer) working in a guitar shop in Taipei, Taiwan. The guitar is the first official John Mayer Signature model made by Martin and was produced as a limited run of only 404, and I own the #173. The guitar features a solid Engelmann spruce top and solid East Indian rosewood back and sides.
I eventually bit the bullet and splurged on a Fender Custom Shop. I feel like I've already used up all my luck finding an OM-28JM, so thinking I could ever get my hands on a Black1 is probably a bit delusional. With that in mind, I once considered getting a PRS Silver Sky, but in the end, I still went with Fender, which, to me, has a certain soul and authenticity.
This guitar was purchased for celebrating my 20-year-old birthday and is the one that introduces me to Martin Guitar. After years of practicing, at that moment, I thought it is time to have an all-solid guitar, and luckily I found this pre-owned Martin at a guitar shop in Tainan, Taiwan. The guitar features a solid Sitka spruce top and solid East Indian rosewood back and sides.
This is my first acoustic guitar. I purchased it at an inconspicuous local guitar shop near my home in Tainan, Taiwan.
This pre-owned guitar is a gift from my aunt. The guitar features a Floyd Rose vibrato system. While this guitar is super unplayable due to its broken vibrato system, which makes it easily out of tune.
This guitar was purchased during my graduation trip to Fukuoka, Japan in 2016. The guitar features a solid Adirondack spruce top and Genuine Mahogany back and sides. The guitar was later sold due to its playability, vintage V-shape neck making me hard to play JM's song. The sound of this guitar is pretty amzing though.
This guitar was purchased at a famous guitar shop in Taipei, Taiwan. It is my first electric guitar, officially. At that moment, I felt like playing JM's electric licks. Despite I had sold it since I later realized I am just an acoustic guy lol.
