Speakers

Rodrigo Aguilar Barrios

I am a first-year PhD student at USC, advised by Professor Corey Baker in the Network Reconnaissance Lab. My research focuses on leveraging machine learning and AI for remote patient monitoring. Currently, I am investigating the usage of biometric data for distress detection to improve cancer patient care.

Charles Bickham

As a Computer Science Ph.D. candidate at USC, I am passionate about revolutionizing healthcare through AI, focusing on depression, eating disorders, HIV, and cancer. My experience includes internships at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, NASA JPL, Accenture, and Farmers & Merchants Bank, providing insights into AI’s real-world impact. As a McNair Scholar and GEM Fellow, I am committed to advancing education and AI research. Beyond academics, I co-founded ScholarSoul to support Black Ph.D. students at USC. I strive to use AI for transformative healthcare advancements while uplifting those who come after me.

John Blosnich

Dr. John Blosnich is an associate professor in the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Blosnich’s program of research seeks to emphasize the social context of suicide to be as paramount for prevention as individual mental health. Prior to USC, he worked for over 10 years with the US Department of Veterans Affairs in both suicide prevention and health research. The majority of his work has focused on a variety of civilian populations as well as military veterans.

Jaiv Doshi

Jaiv Doshi is a fourth-year undergraduate student studying Computer Science at the University of Southern California. He is mentored by Anthony Liang, Yigit Korkmaz, and Prof. Erdem Bıyık (LiRA Lab). His work focuses on developing safe and responsible AI systems for real-world applications.

Tony Fernandes

Tony Fernandes is an undergraduate researcher at the CAIS. His research focuses on leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze illegal wildlife trafficking content on TikTok. Tony is pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Artificial Intelligence Applications. In his free time, he enjoys lifting and mixed martial arts.

Aryan Gulati

Aryan Gulati is a senior majoring in Computer Science. His research focuses on applying machine learning methods to socially beneficial applications. As a former co-president and current senior advisor of CAIS++, the undergraduate branch of USC’s Center for AI in Society, Aryan has led and worked on projects that use machine learning to improve agricultural sustainability, preserve endangered languages, and unlock historical knowledge. Outside of CAIS++, Aryan works with the DILL and STAC labs, where he has worked on improved out-of-distribution detection. Currently, he works on using natural language processing to help understand public attitudes towards homelessness.

Huey Chuan "Linda" Huang

Linda is a doctoral candidate at the USC Rossier School of Education. Her research investigates tensions between human agents and human-created AI agents—specifically, the struggle to express personal, unique ideas versus adopting homogenous AI recommendations; the friction between human and AI creativity; and the dynamics of human–AI relationships. Her research interests are grounded in her lived experience as an adult immigrant, grappling with the duality of assimilating into U.S. society while preserving her intersecting identities. As a Zen practitioner, she views these tensions as essential training in embracing the full spectrum of life’s joys and sorrows.

Angel Hwang

Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang is an assistant professor at USC Annenberg and a human-AI interaction (HAII) researcher. Her research explores the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on work practices in various applied domains. Her work also aims to provide implications for practitioners to design, build, and apply AI-powered technologies for better work futures.

Aditya Kumar

Aditya Kumar is an undergraduate senior at USC majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Artificial Intelligence Applications, and he is interested in applying NLP to address real-world issues. He has previous research experience with low-resource language revitalization, in which he helped develop translation tools for the extinct Muisca language. Currently, he is participating in the Vesuvius Challenge, an effort to use deep learning methods to uncover text preserved in ancient carbonized scrolls.

Leslie Moreno

Leslie Moreno is a fourth year undergraduate majoring in Computer Science at USC Viterbi. As part of the Center for AI in Society’s Student Branch (CAIS++), Leslie helped lead and worked on projects helping preserve endangered languages and agricultural sustainability. Additionally, she previously served as the Co-President of CAIS++, and currently serves as a senior adviser. Outside of CAIS++, Leslie works in the Interaction Lab and GLAMOR Lab, where she has worked on applications of AI for dementia detection. Currently, she is working on detecting bias in sentiment analysis between English and Spanish speakers.

Hannah Murray

Hannah Murray is a second-year PhD student at USC advised by Professor Bistra Dilkina. Her research interests mainly revolve around AI methods for wildlife conservation. She has interests in several facets of conservation, ranging from species monitoring to public awareness. Her prior experience has touched on building and improving species identification for wildlife monitoring of lesser know species, analyzing public attitudes of endangered species on social media leveraging LLMs, and improving methods for predicting wildlife trafficking hotspots and paths around the globe.

Vidur Mushran

Vidur Mushran is a Junior studying Neuroscience at the University of Southern California and an aspiring physician-scientist passionate about artificial intelligence applications to translational research. As a member of CAIS++, the undergraduate student branch of the Center for AI in Society, Vidur is leading the effort to detect radiation exposure on strands of DNA to inform personalized radiation oncology dosing. Outside of CAIS++, Vidur researches with the Kuhn-Hicks Convergent Sciences Institute in Cancer, serves as Co-President of MEDesign, and plays trombone and guitar on the weekend with Remedy through Music.

Pixie Popplewell

Pixie Popplewell is currently the Project Director of the California Homeless Youth Project, a research and policy-based initiative of the California Research Bureau, implementing the first integrative data hub on the current state of youth homelessness. Pixie is pursuing the Doctor of Social Work at the University of Southern California and hopes that further pursuit of education will provide the ability to more strategically integrate their lived experience and profession to empower communities to create a pathway to healing and liberation.

Jaspreet Ranjit

I am a 3rd Year PhD Candidate at the University of Southern California advised by Prof. Swabha Swayamdipta in the NLP department at the DILL Lab and a student leader for the Center for AI in Society at USC. My research interests lie in investigating to what extent language models can help us understand societal issues (i.e. homelessness, suicide interventions) by exploring collaborative settings between domain experts and generative models. I’m a big proponent of interdisciplinary collaborations so a large part of my work involves engaging with community partners and investigating applications of language models for social good.

William Resh

William Resh is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Management at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy. He holds the C. C. Crawford Chair in Performance and Management. He is the Director of USC’s Civic Leadership Education and Research (CLEAR) Initiative (clear.usc.edu). His work focuses on executive politics and civil service institutions and labor markets.

Eric Rice

Eric Rice is a professor and the founding co-director of the USC Center for AI in Society, a joint venture of the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Professor Rice received a BA from the University of Chicago, and an MA and PhD in Sociology from Stanford University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. He joined the USC faculty in 2009. Professor Rice specializes in social network science and theory, as well as community-based research. His primary focus is on youth experiencing homelessness and how issues of social network influence may affect risk-taking behaviors and resilience.

Aryan Shetty

Aryan Shetty is a Graduate Research Assistant at the USC Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, specializing in graph neural networks, link prediction, and AI-driven intervention strategies. He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science (Data Science) from the University of Southern California and a First-Class Honours Bachelor's degree from Cardiff University. With expertise in machine learning, NLP, and deep learning, Aryan has contributed to high-impact projects, including suicide risk prediction using GAT models and counterfactual explanations for network analysis. His research bridges technical advancements with real-world social impact.

Yidan Sun

Yidan Sun is a second-year PhD student in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering. She is a member of the Artificial Intelligence and Complex Systems (AICS) group at USC Information Sciences Institute, advised by Dr. Mayank Kejriwal. Her research focuses on complex systems, network science, and computational social science. She analyzes large-scale networks, with a primary focus on computational approaches to studying human trafficking. Her other projects explore the science of science, including collaboration networks in scholarly publications and grant proposals, as well as broader social science topics such as financial inequities among vulnerable populations.

Jieyu Zhao

Jieyu Zhao is an assistant professor of Computer Science Department at University of Southern California where she is leading the LIME lab. Prior to that, she was an NSF Computing Innovation Fellow at University of Maryland, College Park. Jieyu received her Ph.D. from Computer Science Department, UCLA. Her research interest lies in fairness of ML/NLP models. Her research has been covered by news media such as Wires, The Daily Mail and so on. She was invited by UN-WOMEN Beijing on a panel discussion about gender equality and social responsibility.

Angela Zhou

Angela Zhou is an assistant professor at USC Marshall Data Sciences and Operations, in the Operations group. She works on applications-motivated theoretically-guaranteed methodology in statistical machine learning, operations management, and causal inference, including on algorithmic fairness. Her current work focuses on data-driven sequential decision-making, the interplay of algorithmic decision support and interventions, and the operational provision of social services.

Poster Presenters

John Bunyi

John is interested in studying the application of mental health technologies for increasing access to mental health care for traditionally marginalized populations and for increasing treatment fidelity and effectiveness. He received a BA in Cognitive Psychology from UC Irvine, and his MA in Marriage and Family Therapy from the University of Southern California.

Anisha Chitta

Anisha is a junior at USC studying Computer Science and Business Administration. She is a CURVE researcher at the USC Center for AI in Society (CAIS), working on computer vision models to combat wildlife crime through Operation Pangolin. She has experience with AI, machine learning, and software development, with past projects spanning reinforcement learning and DNA nanopore sequencing analysis. Passionate about the intersection of AI and social impact, Anisha is committed to leveraging technology for conservation and ethical AI initiatives. She is also involved in CAIS++ and LavaLab, where she explores AI research and product development.

Eun Cheol Choi

Eun Cheol Choi is a PhD student at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California. He specializes in the intersection of computational social science, social networks, AI/ML, and journalism. His research focuses on devising effective interventions to combat misinformation.

Aryan Gulati

Ariel Han

Ariel Han is a Postdoctoral Scholar of Technology, Innovation, and Learning at the University of Southern California. Ariel received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine informatics department. Ariel’s research focuses on the intersection of AI, educational technology, and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Ariel designs, develops, and evaluates innovative technologies that support the educational growth of children and their families. By partnering with teachers, students, and parents through participatory studies and co-design activities, she gains valuable insights into the needs and motivations of educational stakeholders, helping to shape the values, practices, and culture of learning.

Jinyang He

Jiyang He is a Ph.D. student in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on applying machine learning and optimization methods to data-driven decision support in healthcare, particularly in predictive modeling for substance use. Her work explores early detection frameworks for problematic cannabis use and healthcare process optimization.

Jessica Javier

Jessica Noël Berry Javier is a dedicated mental health professional with 20+ years of experience. She holds a Doctor of Social Work (candidate) and a Master’s in Social Work from USC, a Master’s in Art Therapy from NYU, and a Women in Leadership Certificate from Cornell. An LCSW and Board-Certified Art Therapist (ATR-BC), she specializes in trauma-focused therapy, EMDR, and creative modalities. Jessica provides Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy and integrates technology into mental health through a social justice lens. A published researcher, peer reviewer, and international practitioner, she is passionate about integrating technology into metal health through exploring neo-ecological theory's role in shaping therapeutic approaches.

Kia Kazemi-Nia

I am a M.S. Applied Data Science student at USC, having also done my undergrad at the university majoring in Data Science and Psychology. I have worked on multiple projects at USC's Information Sciences Institute over the past couple years and enjoy doing work that I feel like will make an impact. I have interests related to health, medicine, and sustainability and, outside of work and school, I like to play and watch soccer and basketball.

Donggyu Kim

Donggyu Kim is a Ph.D. student at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. His research interests are in the psychological underpinnings of human-AI interaction. His research examines how AI-mediated communication influences message persuasion.

Olga Koumoundouros

Olga Koumoundouros is a third-year Ph.D. student at USC’s Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, specializing in research on issues affecting young people experiencing housing instability. Current work explores the intersection of housing insecurity and violence exposure, with a particular focus on gun violence among youth. Olga is especially interested in how positive relationships with supportive adults can help mitigate stressors among unhoused youth. Broader research interests include strengthening the evidence base for community-based violence intervention practices, policy-driven violence prevention research, participatory action research models, survivor-centered approaches, arts-based healing modalities, housing fairness, and guaranteed basic income programs.

Allison Lim

Allison Lim is a third year undergraduate majoring in Computer Science and minoring in English. As part of the Center for AI in Society’s Student Branch (CAIS++), Allison worked on a project identifying hateful tweets through Transformer-based architecture. Outside of CAIS++, Allison works in the HUMANS Lab and CUTELABNAME where she works on mitigating bias in large language models. Currently, she is working on using natural language inference (NLI) to evaluate bias in large language models.

Ziyi Liu

Ziyi Liu is a second-year PhD student advised by Prof. Jieyu Zhao in the LIME Lab. Previously, she earned her master's degree at USC and worked as a Research Assistant in USC ISI's Ink Lab for two years under the guidance of Professor Xiang Ren. Her research primarily focuses on social reasoning and trustworthy NLP, particularly evaluating LLM behavior and aligning LLM values with human values in human- LLM interaction. Her work is driven by two key questions:

How can we make interactions between models and humans more seamless?
How can we ensure the faithfulness of LLMs and avoid hallucinations during interactions?

Renaldo Lopez-Tucux

Ronaldo Lopez-Tucux is a first-generation Guatemalan Latino from South Central Los Angeles and a master’s student in Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on improving automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems for accented English, including African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), to promote fairness. He is passionate about making technology more accessible and representative of different communities.

Jeena Mahajan

Jeena Mahajan is an undergraduate from Santa Clara, California, double-majoring in Computer Science and Applied and Computational Mathematics. She collaborates with CAIS co-director Dr. Bistra Dilkina and PhD student Hannah Murray on Operation Pangolin. Her role involves using computer vision models and other ML techniques to develop a pangolin-specific species identification model that will help prevent illegal wildlife trafficking. In the future, she hopes to continue to use machine learning and AI to make a real-world impact around her.

Sean Minns

Sean, a former filmmaker turned Clinical Psychology PhD student, integrates computational neuroscience and smartphone-based digital phenotyping to develop predictive machine-learning models of cognitive-emotional risk and resilience. Before beginning his PhD, he worked at Harvard’s McLean Hospital, where he designed and tested digital mental health iOS apps for acute inpatient settings and published research on VR interventions. Currently, he employs multimodal digital phenotyping to investigate how environmental factors like pollution impair momentary cognitive functioning, how these impairments contribute to difficulties in emotion regulation, and how these patterns may influence the development and maintenance of psychiatric illness.

Divyajyoti Panda

Divyajyoti works with CAIS co-director Bistra Dilkina on the Machine Learning for Substance Use in Adolescence Project. His interests lies in ML in healthcare and Natural Language Processing, and he is currently working on developing several ML models for predicting marijuana use in adolescents and identifying several promoting and inhibiting factors associated.

Kaushal Patil

Kaushal Patil is a first-year Master’s student in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) at the University of Southern California. He is a Research Assistant at USC Keck School of Medicine’s AI-Reinforce MedTech Program. His research focuses on leveraging AI for social good across geospatial analysis, education, and healthcare, utilizing Large Language Models (LLMs), Explainable AI, and social media analysis. His work integrates multimodal data sources, including satellite imagery and social insights, to tackle real-world challenges. Currently, he is working on automated knowledge graph construction using LLMs and enhancing their reasoning capabilities for improved automated question generation.

Rohit Ramachandran

Rohit Ramachandran is a second-year PhD student in Industrial & Systems Engineering at the Information Sciences Institute. His research focuses on developing techniques based on spatial science, optimization, and network science principles to support food policy interventions that enhance healthy food access and accessibility. As part of the NSF Smart and Connected Communities: Food Environment Dynamics grant, he is currently working on a project that leverages large-scale human mobility data to determine equitable supermarket placement.

Thomas Reeves

Thomas is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Network Reconnaissance Lab at the University of Southern California (USC), advised by Professor Corey Baker and supported as a GEM Fellow. His research focuses on the intersection of robot learning and wireless networks. Prior to pursuing a Ph.D., he earned a master's degree in computer science and artificial intelligence at USC and a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of California, Irvine.

Arushi Saran

I am a first-year MS student in CS(AI) at USC, building expertise in classical AI/ML, deep learning, and natural language processing through coursework, projects, and hackathons. I have a strong interest in applying deep learning/NLP to research projects that drive social impact. I am presenting VisionMate, a project that won my team first prize for accessibility at HackSC, showcasing AI-driven solutions for improved inclusivity.

Nripsuta (Ani) Saxena

Nripsuta (Ani) Saxena is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science. Her research is broadly situated at the interface between computer science, sociology, and psychology. Her work delves deeply into spatial fairness, assessing and correcting for bias due to location's correlation with legally protected attributes such as race or ethnicity. Inspired by real-world problems, her current work focuses on studying and increasing equitable food access for all population groups.

Claire Smerdon

Claire Smerdon will graduate with her Master’s in Computer Science in May 2025. Claire has conducted innovative research in natural language processing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and the social sciences. She is passionate about approaching technological challenges through an interdisciplinary lens, whether through mentoring as a Course Producer or in research. Claire earned her Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Business Administration, Magna Cum Laude, from USC with the Dean’s Scholar scholarship. Now, she is thrilled to join Palo Alto Networks, where she will pursue AI and cybersecurity, advance security and privacy, and champion greater accessibility to computer science for all.

Qingshi Sun

Qingshi obtained his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, where he conducted research in application of vaccine allocation and wildfire control via tools from reinforcement learning and stochastic optimization. He is interested in interdisciplinary research in the areas of machine learning, data science, and operations research, especially as it applies to societal problems.

Risha Surana

Risha is an undergraduate student studying Computer Science and Gerontology. Her work focuses on the intersection of NLP and healthcare applications, with a focus on chemical representations for LLMs, drug synergy, public health outcomes, and chemical emergency response. She has worked professionally in emergency medicine for over five years.

Bill Tang

Bill is a fifth-year PhD student in the Industrial and Systems Engineering at University of Southern California advised by Prof. Phebe Vayanos. His research interests are in constrained optimization approaches for offline policy optimization and scarce resource allocation problems, with applications towards social policy issues like homelessness.

Jackson Trager

Jackson Trager is a behavioral researcher and Social Psychology PhD student at the Morality and Language Lab. His research examines how individuals and groups form moral identities and behave within cultural conflicts, the impact of digital technologies, and innovative methods for measuring and analyzing these dynamics. In particular, he focuses on the role of threat, bias, and prejudice in technology across and within cultures.

Jinyi Ye

Jinyi Ye is a first-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science. Passionate about the intersection of AI and social science, she explores social networks, AI agents, and human-AI interactions using innovative, social science-inspired machine learning and simulation methods.

Yingxiao Ye

Yingxiao Ye is a 6th year PhD student in the Industrial and Systems Engineering department and a student researcher at the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society. Yingxiao's research mainly focuses on robust optimization and machine learning, especially their applications in societal problems.

Mengchu Yue

Mengchu Yue is a senior majoring in applied and computational mathematics. He is interested in using quantitative modeling techniques to address a variety of societal issues and improve decision-making processes. Currently, he is collaborating on a project with summer scholars Yongjia Wang and Joshua Zhong, and is guided by professors Andrew Daw, Vishal Gupta, and Angela Zhou from the Department of Data Science and Operation at Marshall School of Business.

Liana Zhu

Liana Zhu is an undergraduate computer science student at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Through the USC Center for AI in Society organization, she works with Dr. Bistra Dilkina and Hannah Murray on the Operation Pangolin project, utilizing data management and species classification tools to understand more about the illegal wildlife trafficking patterns of Pangolins. In the future, she hopes to pursue work with machine learning and data science, specifically focused on environmental conservation and sustainability. Outside of her research, she enjoys hiking and photography.

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