Student Leaders in AI
A program for students across Harvard
Meet the Spring 2023 Cohort
Head Organizer
Alexandra Tsalidis
Alex is a Master of Science in Bioethics candidate at Harvard Medical School. She is passionate about the ethics of artificial intelligence and how it can inform policy decisions. As an affiliated researcher in the Ethical Intelligence Lab at Harvard Business School, she is currently investigating how AI transparency and explainability impact consumer trust, while also working as a Research Assistant in Dr. Francis X. Shen’s Neurolaw lab. Prior to this, Alex earned a law degree from the University of Cambridge and was a research intern at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine where she studied the medical liability exposure of doctors using AI devices.
Organizer
Sam Yoon
Sam is a Fulbright Scholar studying a MPP at HKS. He recently finished a Product Policy Manager internship at Meta in their responsible AI team. After graduating, he will (probably) go back into consulting with BCG, advising large companies on AI strategies. He is primarily interested in ‘what makes good societies?’, and understands that AI will play an important role. His spare time includes serving as the Student Body President, and in his spare spare time he enjoys start-up dreaming, golf, and soccer.
Organizer
Jada Pisani Lee
To Be Updated
Eirliani (Lin) Abdul Rahman
Eirliani is a second-year doctoral student in public health at Chan. From 2015-2021, she worked with Nobel Peace laureate Kailash Satyarthi. Since its inception in 2016, Eirliani was a founding member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council as an expert on child online safety. In news that went viral, she resigned from the Council in December 2022, speaking out against the meteoric rise in hate speech since Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform. In response, Musk dissolved the Council four days later. Her work has been profiled by, inter alia, the BBC, CBC, NPR, Slate, Harvard Public Health, and Business Insider.
Sacha Alanoca
Sacha Alanoca is an MPA Candidate and John F. Kennedy Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, specializing in the politics and ethics of AI. She is the Co-Chair of the AI & Emerging Tech Caucus at HKS and focuses her research on AI governance, algorithmic fairness and price discrimination. Prior to HKS, she worked as a Senior AI Policy Researcher and Head of Community Development for the think tank The Future Society, where she led the development of Tunisia's AI national strategy and published scientific and policy papers on topics such as AI tools for pandemic response. Sacha is an expert for the OECD’s AI Policy Observatory working group on Trustworthy AI and was named one of the “100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics” in 2022. She is Franco-Chilean.
Linn Bieske
Linn is currently pursuing a Masters in Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School. Within her studies she focuses on cybersecurity, national security, AI, and international relations. Previously Linn has worked for Google X, in the Executive Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations or for McKinsey Digital & Analytics, where she served clients across three different continents and in more than 10 different countries.
Julia Bodea
Julia is currently in her first year at Harvard Business School. Prior to that, she worked for five years as a Product Manager at IBM Watson on various AI products including visual recognition, machine learning model building, and conversational AI. She also spent 14 months as Chief of Staff to the VP of Product Management of IBM’s largest software unit, Data & AI
Rebecca Brand
Rebecca is a designer and strategist passionate about improving people’s connection with the environment, technology, and one another. Currently, she’s a Masters candidate in Design Engineering at Harvard, focusing on how data can be leveraged for social good. Rebecca is curious - and cautious - about human-AI interaction and data-driven applications to civic and climate innovation, especially with regards to systems-level challenges. As a design leader and participant in this program, she hopes to continue challenging her assumptions about AI and weaving responsible computing into her practice. In her free time, Rebecca likes playing tennis, throwing pottery, and falling asleep while reading.
Madison Coots
Madison is currently a PhD student in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Before coming to Harvard, she studied engineering and computer science at Stanford. Her research interests are in computational approaches to policy and decision-making with a broad range of applications, including in criminal justice reform and medicine.
Kim Cordova
Kim Córdova is a Mexican-American writer, independent curator and cultural entrepreneur. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including Art Agenda, Art Review, deAppel, frieze, SFMOMA’s Open Space, and Momus where she was the Mexico City Contributing Editor. Her texts were shortlisted for the 2017 and 2020 International Award for Criticism and she was selected for the 2020 Art Writer Workshop, a collaboration between the Andy Warhol Foundation and the International Association of Art Critics. In 2021 she was named an Eisenhower Fellow and an Arts for LA Delegate.
She is currently a Master of Design Studies candidate in the power and place trajectory at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is a graduate of the two year post graduate studio art program at Soma (Mexico City) and received her BA from UCSB’s College of Creative Studies (Santa Barbara, CA). She has completed numerous international residencies including at Tbilisi Architecture Biennial, Stroom den Haag, CalArts Soma Water Research Residency, Saas Fe Summer at Spike Quarterly, Varda, and Soma Summer.
Alexander Davies
Xander is in his fourth year at Harvard, where he studies computer science. He's previously published machine learning research with Dr. David Kruger (University of Cambridge) and Dr. Gabriel Kreiman (Harvard Medical School), and led a 40-person collaborative research sprint on mechanistic interpretability with Redwood Research. Xander is motivated by reducing risks from advanced AI, and is the founding director of the Harvard AI Safety Team (HAIST), a student group which supports students in conducting AI safety research. Xander also enjoys writing, chess, listening to music, and playing piano.
Ben Donham
Benjamin Donham, M.D. is a military physician leader with a focus on battlefield medicine and artificial intelligence. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Anthropology, a Doctor of Medicine from Emory University, and completed residency training in Emergency Medicine at the University of Cincinnati. He is board certified by the American Board of Emergency Medicine, and is an Associate Professor of Military and Emergency Medicine at the Uniform Services University. Currently, he is a National Security Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Anchor Ebanks
Anchor Ebanks is an entrepreneur exploring the use of artificial intelligence techniques in healthcare (particularly preventive medicine) to drive better patient outcomes. He is a first year MBA student at Harvard Business School and previously worked at Google. Beyond his interest in AI, he is a proud Texan who enjoys brewing mushroom coffee, listening to deep house music, cheering for Lewis Hamilton, and watching sunrises/sets.
Shira Gur-Arieh
Shira is a current LL.M student at Harvard Law School, where she is focusing her studies on algorithmic fairness and discrimination. Before coming to Harvard, Shira served as a clerk to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel, and later worked as a lawyer at a non-profit organization focusing on economic justice issues. Shira received her Bachelor of Law, magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Johanna Hahn
Johanna Hahn is a legal scholar from Germany focusing on criminal law and emerging technologies. She is currently earning an LL.M. at Harvard Law School as a Fulbright Scholar and working on her PhD in law on the use of automated facial recognition in criminal investigations (funded by the German National Academic Foundation). Before that, she studied law in Germany and then worked as a law clerk at the Federal Constitutional Court and the Federal Ministry of Justice.
Barath Harithas
Barath is a Master in Public Policy candidate at Harvard Kennedy School. He is a Fulbright Scholar, a John F. Kennedy Fellow & a Belfer Young Leader.
Barath led the development of deep-tech standards in areas straddling AI, Quantum Computing, IoT & Cybersecurity in Singapore including a certification scheme to facilitate the deployment of trustworthy & secure AI which is currently being incorporated into an international standard. He also drafted the first-ever National AI Standards Roadmap for Singapore.
Prior to this, Barath served in the Singapore Foreign Service on the US Desk and was on the policy team for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the largest and most ambitious free trade agreement signed-to-date. Barath also served in the Singapore Armed Forces, in its equivalent of the US Marine Corps, as a Captain.
Sylvia Hartmann
Sylvia Hartmann is a physician and master's student in Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. During her medical studies, she co-founded an NGO working on advocacy and education for planetary health, mainly the effects of climate change on human health and has worked in this field for the past six years. She furthermore conducted research in computational medicine and genomics at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité and is interested in how AI can improve workflows in healthcare to make this sector more sustainable.
Julia High
Julia High is a first-year student at Harvard College, and she intends to concentrate in government with a secondary in computer science. She is fascinated with the idea of preserving civil liberties in the face of the new technology Gilded Age. Julia has an extensive background in voting rights work and policy, which has helped her understand how AI will profoundly affect our nation’s democracy. She is excited to learn about the deployment, development, and policy factors surrounding artificial intelligence from her fellow cohort members in the Student Leaders in AI program.
Rebecca Hurwitz
Rebecca Hurwitz is a first-year graduate student at Harvard studying biostatistics. Originally from San Francisco, CA, she completed her undergraduate degree in biology at UC Berkeley. Rebecca is passionate about the intersection of technology and health, particularly AI/ML and its applications to healthcare and biotechnology. She is most interested in the ways that we can use artificial intelligence for good, especially to improve the health of those who are under-resourced. Rebecca is thrilled to further learn about artificial intelligence and machine learning and collaborate with faculty, industry leaders, and fellow students in the Harvard Student Leaders in AI program.
Gauri Jain
Hi! I'm Gauri and I'm a 1st year Computer Science PhD student studying AI for Social Good with Milind Tambe. I'm originally from Bay Area, California, and in my free time, love being outdoors or music-ing with friends.
You can read more about my interests here! https://gjain234.github.io/
Yan Kaled
Yan is a master's student in computational science at Harvard interested in applications of AI to research, education and talent development. He is particularly interested in leveraging AI to understand cognition, and to leverage our understanding of cognition to build more powerful AI systems.
Trevor Levin
Trevor Levin is a JD/MPP student at Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School, though he is taking the 2022-23 year off to co-found the Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative, an organization that supports and accelerates students in conducting research relevant to mitigating risks from advanced AI systems. When at HLS and HKS, Trevor's studies focus on international relations and the governance of artificial intelligence, an intersection he studied as a summer research fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI. He is also the director of governance programs at the Harvard AI Safety Team. Trevor also enjoys urbanism and playing the guitar.
Eric Li
Eric is a junior at Harvard College studying Computer Science and is passionate about social impact tech. On campus, he founded Harvard Tech for Social Good and is currently building Harvard Undergraduate Group Peer Therapy. During internships, he has explored the different ways organizations use tech to solve problems — working in product at Microsoft, software at the Boston Housing Authority, and climate strategy at Google X. When not working, you can find him playing basketball, reading novels, or watching Vox videos.
Jenn Louie
Jenn Louie is a former Head of Business Integrity Operations at Facebook. She previously served as the first Head of Trust & Safety at Meetup and established her career in policy and Trust and Safety at Google. Jenn has spoken on online risk and tech systems at SXSW, IDEO, Techweek NYC, and the Microsoft Social Computing Symposium. She is a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School, where she is learning about moral formation. Jenn aspires to dismantle social inequities in social media AI that are recreated through masked moral inheritances transferred to tech governance and design by creating a Moral Innovation Lab. She is the founder of the Spiritual Care Project and an industry expert in Trust & Safety systems and Tech Policy.
Daniel Low
Daniel Low is a PhD Candidate in the Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology program at Harvard University and MIT. He is working on detecting mental health symptoms from speech and text data using natural language processing, machine learning, and causal inference. He is focusing on developing new methods to better predict and understand suicidal thoughts and behaviors. His research also tries to measure the effects of meditation and psychedelics more objectively. He seeks to develop technology that can empower individuals by providing them with digital assessments and interventions to overcome barriers to treatment such as cost and sociocultural inequity.
Damion Mannings
A ‘23 Ed. M. candidate at the Ed School, being a ‘Harvard Student Leader in AI’ allows Damion Mannings to collaborate with scholars at Berkman Klein Center while enhancing his Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery grant regarding Recommendation #3: Harvard’s intellectual partnership with HBCUs in STEM. He is currently supporting Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Strategic Plan. Originally from Jamaica, Damion recently relocated to the U.S. from Japan. He has ascended Mt. Fuji 3 times, volunteered on a global voyage to 20 countries along the Southern Hemisphere, and enjoys conducting Japanese tea ceremony.
Clare Mathias
Clare Mathias is a 1L at Harvard Law School. Before coming to law school, she led stakeholder engagement for Facebook's team on the Oversight Board. The board is an international group of speech and human rights experts that has binding power over Facebook's content moderation decisions.
Mahia Rahman
Mahia Rahman is a sophomore at Harvard College concentrating in computer science. She is passionate about using technology to spark positive social change, particularly through data visualization and programming. She is also skilled in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and currently works at the Harvard Map Collection. Furthermore, Mahia is involved in Women in Computer Science (WICS) as a board member and the Bengali Student Association (BASHA). Mahia has completed Google CSSI and an internship with Amazon to strengthen her programming skills. For fun, she loves to paint, watch movies, and spend time with her family.
Dagny Reese
Dagny Reese is a current MMSc Immunology student at HMS. During their BSc at University College London, they developed a strong interest in applications of AI in therapy development and immunology in their own and others' research, in particular innate immunity and immunotherapy development. Moving forward, they are interested in learning more about the ethical implications of AI and how current concerns can be addressed in research.
Julia Sebastien
Determined to unmask how emerging technologies and mass media can shape our perceptions and behaviors, Julia Sebastien completed a double-major in Media Studies and Advanced Arts and Humanities at Western University in 2019, then a second Honors Bachelor’s degree specializing in Psychological research from York University in 2022. Now a Master’s student in Learning Design, Innovation and Technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Julia rarely turns down an opportunity to advance her research and design interests in exploring, rethinking, and improving how new media catalyze enduring transformative change at the individual and societal level.
Deepak Singh
Deepak Singh is a senior at Harvard College concentrating in Computer Science and Neuroscience, with a secondary in Philosophy. He researches biologically inspired deep learning with the Kreiman Lab at the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines and has published work at leading conferences like ICLR. He is Co-President of the Harvard Undergraduate Machine Intelligence Community, where he created an educational fellowship on deep learning with over 150 alumni. Deepak is currently building a drug discovery startup (advised by leading professors at HMS and JHU) which leverages generative AI to identify targets in the treatment of glaucom
Athena Tassis
Athena Tassis is a graduate student in the Master of Education, Learning Design Innovation and Technology program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). She has a passion for the use of AI in education contexts and its interdisciplinary nature. Currently, she is a research assistant at HGSE’s Next Level Lab, exploring how workforce development is evolving toward a synergistic approach to implementing AI. She also has worked as a researcher at the University of Toronto, investigating how AI courses are taught to pre-service teachers and educators. As an AI Leader at Harvard, Athena aims to delve deeper into the ethical implications and policies surrounding the use of AI.
Samara Trilling
Samara Trilling (she/her) is a law student, software engineer and policy technologist interested in anti-monopoly work, tech unionization, and algorithmic regulation. As a fellow at the Aspen Tech Policy Hub, Samara wrote policy recommendations for regulating ML mortgage algorithms. Previously, Samara built housing justice software for tenant power at Justfix and city planning software at Sidewalk Labs and Google Fiber. Samara has a degree in computer science from Columbia University with a specialization in artificial intelligence. Samara loves hiking, collects books on the history of computing, and plans to start a land cooperative after law school.
Arthur van Havre
Arthur is a second-year student in the Master in Design Engineering program jointly offered by SEAS and the GSD. He has extensive experience designing and deploying data science products and is passionate about equitable AI, GreenTech, and Web3. Before joining Harvard, Arthur worked as an AI strategy consultant and delivery lead at IVADO Labs in Montreal, Canada. When he's not coding or making slides, you can find him dancing to techno or building robots.
Daeun (Diana) Yoo
Daeun (Diana) Yoo is a Product Designer and HCI researcher who has a specialty in “Design with AI.” She worked as a UX designer and CEO’s creative advisor at Samsung. These days, she is expanding her expertise in "Design with generative AI" at Harvard University and MIT Media Lab using Dall-E and ChatGPT. Daeun is building diverse AI-assisted human-centered solutions in both industrial & academic ways to improve humankind’s better well-being, co-work, and creativity.
Portfolio: www.daeunyoo.com.
Mark York
Mark is a PhD Candidate in Computer Science with research in alternative credit assessment, information elicitation, and machine learning algorithms. He is the co-founder and CEO of Yield, an early-stage salary on demand and smart contracts startup in Côte d'Ivoire. Mark grew up on a farm in Minnesota, and before his PhD he traded commodities at Cargill, led a data science team at a startup, and consulted at McKinsey. He is also the co-founder of Tractors for Africa, an NGO which provides tractor services and farm credit to over 1000 farmers in Ghana.
Tom Zick
Tom Zick earned her PhD from UC Berkeley and is currently a JD Candidate at Harvard Law. Her research focuses on frameworks for stakeholder inclusion and risk mitigation in AI deployment. Her work has been featured in peer reviewed journals as well as tech crunch. Prior to law school, she was a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and has worked on data privacy and AI ethics both in city government and VC.