Stanford HAI Names Seven New Post and Pre-doctoral Fellows

These scholars will join 11 returning fellows to study AI technologies, applications, and societal impact.

Stanford HAI Names Seven New Post and Pre-doctoral Fellows

The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI is pleased to welcome our 2022/23 fellows. These post and pre-doctoral scholars and practitioners focus on a wide range of topics in artificial intelligence, from technological innovation to international security, ethical design, equitable learning, philosophy of science, and more.

Stanford HAI launched its fellowship programs to encourage interdisciplinary research, facilitate new collaborations, and grow our community of scholars. To support this multidisciplinary approach, HAI partners with organizations across campus. Many of our fellows have joint appointments with the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity, as well as the Stanford departments of computer science and psychology and the Stanford Graduate School of Education. 

Meet this year’s new fellows:

Julie George, HAI-CISAC Pre-doctoral Fellow

Julie George is a Ph.D. candidate in the government department at Cornell University, specializing in international security. Her current research focuses on answering the question: “Under what conditions do dual-use emerging technologies proliferate in the international system?” In her dissertation project, she investigates the likelihood of proliferation of three emerging technologies: artificial intelligence, robotics, and cyber. She selects these three emerging innovations based on their date of discovery in the 1940s and 50s and analyzes the convergent/divergent paths taken by states and the private sector. Previously, Julie was a summer associate fellow at RAND's National Security Research Division (2020) and Project Air Force (2021). She was the instructor of record for a freshman writing seminar at Cornell University entitled Emerging Technologies in International Security, as well as a graduate teaching assistant for Introductory to Probability and Statistics and Advanced Regression Analysis. Prior to her  PhD studies at Cornell University, she worked at the Atlantic Council and completed a graduate fellowship at the Nonproliferation Education and Research Center (NEREC) housed at KAIST University in South Korea.

Ian Reynolds, HAI-CISAC Pre-doctoral Fellow 

Ian Reynolds  is a Ph.D. candidate at American University, School of International Service. His broad research interests focus on the intersection of science and politics as well as digital technologies and international security. More specifically, his dissertation work explores the history and cultural politics of artificial intelligence and its relationship with military command and control practices in the United States. During his time at American University, he has  served as both a teaching assistant and research assistant. In addition to teaching and research responsibilities at AU, he is a doctoral fellow at the Internet Governance Lab as well as a research associate at the Center for Security, Innovation, and New Technology.

Eddie Yang, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law Pre-doctoral Fellow

Eddie Yang is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of political science at University of California San Diego. He studies repression and the politics of artificial intelligence. His dissertation is focused on how existing repressive institutions limit the usefulness of AI for authoritarian control, with a focus on China. He uses audit experiments on algorithms, large collections of data, and in-depth fieldwork to investigate how authoritarian politics cripples AI’s ability to automate control. Prior to UC San Diego, he received his M.A. from the University of Chicago and B.A. from UCLA. This summer, Eddie was also a research intern at Microsoft Research. 

Benji Xie, HAI-EIS Embedded EthiCS Postdoctoral Fellow 

Benjamin Xie received his Ph.D. in information science from the University of Washington, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and also a research intern with computing education nonprofit Code.org. His doctoral research explored stakeholders’ interpretations of data for equitable computing education, identifying socio-technical factors to consider when using data for equity-oriented goals. He designs and evaluates ways to contextualize data with domain expertise for equitable learning, community advocacy, and ethical AI design. He engages with computing education, human-computer interaction, and AI ethics research communities. 

Brett Karlan, HAI-EIS Postdoctoral Fellow

Brett Karlan received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University, where he wrote a dissertation on rationality, reasoning, and human bias. He works at the intersection of normative philosophy (especially epistemology and ethics) and the philosophy of science (especially cognitive science and AI). For the past two years, he has been a research fellow in the History and Philosophy of Science Department at the University of Pittsburgh, where he worked with Colin Allen on the Machine Wisdom Project. His current research focuses on how notions like rationality, reasons-responsiveness, and achievement might help us construct robust frameworks for understanding the intersection of cognition, action, and emerging technology. 

Ting-An Lin, HAI-EIS Postdoctoral Fellow

Ting-An Lin received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Rutgers University, where she also earned a graduate certificate in women’s and gender studies. She specializes in ethics, social and political philosophy, and feminist philosophy. Her doctoral work concerned the unfair constraints that social structures impose on different groups of people, which constitute what she called structural wrongs. She has developed a moral framework for addressing structural wrongs and used it to analyze various contemporary social issues, including sexual violence, transnational migration, and artificial intelligence bias. At Stanford, she aims to continue examining the impact of AI through a structural lens while exploring the potential of using AI or other digital tools to facilitate democratic participation and promote collective action toward social change. 

Gabriel Unger, Stanford Digital Economy Lab Postdoctoral Fellow

Gabriel Unger will be receiving his PhD in economics at Harvard in September 2022. He completed a JD at Yale Law School, and earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard. With a focus on macroeconomics, his research broadly attempts to understand how technological changes, like the IT Revolution, change our understanding of important macroeconomic questions, such as the mechanics of productivity growth, the rise of industrial concentration, or the transformation of the business cycle.

In addition, Stanford HAI is pleased to welcome back our returning fellows:

  • Johannes Eichstaedt, Ram and Vijay Shriram HAI Faculty Fellow, Department of Psychology: A computational social science, Johannes uses Facebook and Twitter to measure the psychological states of large populations and individuals to determine the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that drive illness, depression, or support well-being. 
  • Hariharan Subramonyam, Ram and Vijay Shriram HAI Faculty Fellow, School of Education: Hari’s research focuses on augmenting critical human tasks (such as learning, creativity, and sensemaking) with AI by incorporating principles from cognitive psychology, as well as investigating support tools for multidisciplinary teams to co-design human-centered AI experiences.
  • Peter Norvig, HAI Distinguished Education Fellow: A computer scientist who directed Google's core search algorithms group and Google's Research group, Peter is helping Stanford build student courses to teach human-centered AI. 
  • Faye-Marie Vassel, Stem Education, Equity, and Inclusion Fellow: Faye-Marie’s research focuses on elucidating key factors that may inhibit students from groups historically marginalized in STEM from successfully persisting in the computational sciences.
  • Jennifer King, Privacy and Data Policy Fellow: Jen specializes in information privacy, technology policy, and human-computer interaction.
  • JJ Lee, Stanford Digital Economy Lab Postdoctoral Fellow: JJ is interested in how cognitive biases affect entrepreneurial decision making. His current focus is developing new well-being metrics by using massive online choice experiments. 
  • J. Frank Li, Stanford Digital Economy Lab Postdoctoral Fellow: Frank’s research focuses on the effects of technological innovation and adoption on corporate performance, labor market, and entrepreneurial activities. 
  • Ruyu Chen, Stanford Digital Economy Lab Postdoctoral Fellow: Ruyu’s research interest lies at the intersection of economics of innovation, information systems, and business strategy. She explores factors that influence technology adoption and innovation by firms. 
  • Diana Acosta Navas, HAI-EIS Embedded EthiCS Fellow: Diana works at the intersection of applied ethics, political philosophy, and public policy, addressing issues related to the protection of human rights in scenarios where violence, prejudice and inequality prevent their effective exercise.
  • Evelyn (Wenjie) Mei, 2022-2023 CCSRE Technology and Racial Equity Practitioner Fellow: Evelyn is a community leader and technologist focusing on ethical AI for racial unity.
  • Collier Navaroli, 2022-2023 CCSRE Technology and Racial Equity Practitioner Fellow: Collier’s work lies at the intersection of race, media, technology, law, and policy. Her current work examines the traditional balance between free expression and safety by developing and enforcing power-conscious global platform policy. 

Learn more about fellowship opportunities at Stanford HAI.