I am a computer scientist leading research at the intersection of trustworthy AI, national security, and public policy, with experience spanning government, academia, and non-profits. Currently, I serve as the Director of the Office of AI Innovation and Integration at the University at Buffalo, NY, where I lead the development of university-wide AI policy and conduct research on AI models to better understand societal well-being. Additionally, I am an adjunct researcher at RAND. When full-time at RAND, I led analytical studies on policy-relevant questions regarding the development, deployment, and adoption of AI in challenging national security and workforce development contexts. I am a member of the Association for Computing Machinery’s U.S. Tech Policy Committee, contributing to its policy publications.

Before RAND, I worked at the National Science Foundation, where I was the 2022-23 AAAS Science and Technology Policy fellow within the National AI Research Institutes program and on the leadership team for the ExpandAI program. I was the 2022 Mirzayan Policy Fellow at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, where I contributed to the work of the Committee on National Statistics on data governance.

I completed my postdoc in the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College and my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University at Buffalo, where my doctoral work was awarded the Chih Foundation Research Award. Before my Ph.D., I was a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I obtained my M.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, Riverside, where I received the Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship.

Recent Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

• U.S. National Science Foundation EAGER grant via the National AI Research Resource program, 2025-2027 to develop an AI infrastructure to advance research in informing social policy (collaborative with Dartmouth CS)
• Winner of RAND’s National Security Research Division’s Call for Big Ideas, 2024.
• Finalist for the Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year 2023.
• Awarded the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellowship, 2022-23.
• Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow 2022, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, March 2022.
• Postdoc Seed Grant, Irving Institute of Energy and Society, Dartmouth College 2020 - Sept 2021.
• Chih Foundation Research and Publication Award, University at Buffalo, NY, May 2019.
• Doctoral Consortium Scholarship for AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Jan 2019.

Highlights

• Invited Speaker Panelist at the Third Responsible AI in the Military Domain, REAIM Summit, 2026 on AI for decision making [press]
• Technical Program Committee for ACM Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies, 2026, 2025, 2024.
• Panelist on AI governance at the Annual AI and National Security Conference at Northwestern, 2025 [press]
• Mitigating Risks at the Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Chemical and Biological Weapons, RAND Research Report, 2025.
• Honored to be a panelist at the Responsible AI in the Military Domain, REAIM Summit, Seoul, 2024, for a session on Building Consensus Definitions and benchmarks for Military AI at Regional Level [press].
• Building a Diverse Pool of AI Talent for DHS Recruitment Leading with Artificial Intelligence,[press], Published as expert insights on U.S. Civilian and Military Leaders on Strengthening the AI Workforce, RAND Corporation, 2024
• Applying an Equity Lens to Digital Content Transparency and Global AI Standards, RAND Perspective, 2024. [press]
• Contributed to the Comments to Office of Management and Budget on Privacy Impact Assessments, Association for Computing Machinery Technology Policy Committee (ACM), US Technology Policy Committee, April, 2024. [press]

• Quantifying biases in digital data Quantifying participation biases on social media, published in EPJ Data Science, 2023. Article about our work on Dartmouth news.

• Contributed to the policy paper, titled Joint Principles for the Development, Deployment, and Use of Generative AI Technologies, Association for Computing Machinery Technology Policy Committee, Europe/US Technology Policy Committees, June 2023.

• Honored to be invited by the UN Divison of Social and Economic Affairs for the Expert Group Meeting on the Implementation Of The Third United Nations Decade For The Eradication Of Poverty (2018-2027), UN Economic Commission of Africa, Addis Ababa, May 2023. (Paper and presentation)

• Perspective on AI-assisted diplomatic decision-making during crises - challenges and opportunities, published in the Frontiers in Big Data-Cybersecurity and Privacy, May 2023.

• Presented my work, “Understanding existential societal problems using a computational lens,” at the AAAS Annual Meeting, March 2023, in Washington, DC.

• Research paper on Accurate Intercensal Estimates of Energy Access to Track Sustainable Development Goal 7, published in EPJ Data Science, 2022.