Kapor Foundation Research Fellowship

Erin Anderson is a doctoral candidate and director of Georgia State University’s Interactive Teaching and Learning Lab, where mixed-reality simulation (MRS) learning experiences are used to develop preservice teachers’ pedagogical skills. Erin specializes in making these trainings inclusive, providing access for Deaf and Blind teachers since she passionately believes if educational technology does not work for all, it does not work. Erin operates in the critical practice-based approach to teacher education by combining pedagogical skill development with critical consciousness development, ensuring participants leave their MRS training prepared to identify and combat inequities. Erin is also a sought-after research assistant, helping faculty design integrated computing curriculums for students with disabilities, analyzing existing K-8 integrated computing curriculums, helping universities strengthen their CS teacher preparation programs, and identifying pedagogical strategies that foster critical consciousness. She brings technoskepticism to her work to temper uncritical tech development. This skepticism comes from spending over a decade teaching in schools from rural Madagascar, with the Peace Corps, to last-chance high schools in New York City, as an English and Special Education teacher. Erin understands the harm of unchecked educational reforms so her research hopes to guide this next evolution in educational reform - automating the teacher certification process.

I am a technologist and policy advocate with nearly a decade of experience in AI and software development. After earning degrees in computer science and mathematics, I worked as a software engineer and later engineering manager at Amazon, where I contributed to the development and scaling of "Just Walk Out" technology. My expertise spans backend distributed systems, computer vision, and GDPR compliance. I have a strong interest in the societal impacts of AI and have actively participated in worker organizing and technology policy fellowships. Currently, I am pursuing a Master's in Law and Technology at Georgetown University Law Center, focusing on AI governance, data regulation, and privacy. This interdisciplinary education, combined with my technical background, equips me to bridge the gap between technology, business and policy. I aim to leverage this unique skill set to inform and shape equitable tech policies that address disparities and enhance accountability within the tech industry.

Errika is the inaugural Executive Director for the national STEM Funders Network. Previously she was the Senior Program Officer at the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta leading a team creating equity in education and workforce development for over 900,000 students. She has also served as the Executive Director of the Technology Association of Georgia Education Collaborative, Vice President for IT Senior Management Forum, Vice President for the Gifted Education Foundation, and at Southwire, BMC Software, and IBM. Currently, she serves as the Georgia co-lead for the National Million Women Mentors initiative, the Board Chair for Project Scientist’s Board of Directors, Inspiredu’s Board of Directors, and Movement Strategy Center’s Board of Directors. She also serves on the National Advisory Committee for the ADVANCE Research and Coordination Network, the steering committee for the National Center for Family Math, and the Georgia Department of Education’s Computer Science Advisory Council. She has been honored as an Outstanding Georgia Citizen by the Secretary of the State, a member of the Nation Swell Council, National Women in Technology Advocate of the Year, Million Women Mentors Trailblazer Award, a Woman of the Year by Atlanta’s Women in Technology, an Ecosystem Builder by the Tech for All Alliance, and with several distinctions from her alma mater, the Georgia Institute of Technology (e.g., Outstanding Young Alumna of the Year, Leaders and Legend Honoree, Women Out Front, Alumna of Distinction, Community Builder Award, Alumni Trailblazer Award, Mentor of the Year).

I am a Computer Science Tenure track faculty member at Perimeter College, Georgia State University, and a CS PhD student at GSU. Before moving into academia, I taught high school students in Georgia for 17 years. I taught AP CS Principles, AP CS A & AB, and other CS courses. When the College Board introduced AP CS Principles, I was invited to pilot the course and later work with them to develop the curriculum and national AP exam. I worked with NMSI to provide professional development to computer science teachers nationwide. Making computer science education accessible to all is a priority for me. During my years as a high school teacher, I co-founded the GaCSTA chapter and worked with GaDOE to develop the CS Pathway for high school students. I was a White House invitee as part of the CS4All advocacy efforts to improve access to CS Education for all. Since 2017, I have taken an interest in learning about biases AI systems exhibit due to the unfiltered, non-curated datasets used to train AI/ML systems. I decided my dissertation topic would be on finding ways to mitigate bias. Users, especially marginalized groups, get intimidated by user interfaces not geared towards putting the user at ease. They watch others use systems confidently, increasing their discomfort and mistrust. My dissertation aims to bring the two fields of explainability and usability together to increase transparency of AI systems.

Annabel Rothschild is a PhD candidate in Human-Centered Computing at Georgia Tech, advised by Dr. Betsy DiSalvo & Dr. Carl DiSalvo. Her dissertation explores the impact of data workers’ lived experience and perspective on the work they conduct – positioning them as early dataset auditors – and how these understandings can be used to determine responsible and reasonable dataset use in AI systems. Her work is simultaneously technical, focusing on how datasets materially change due to annotator agency and understanding, and social, with an emphasis on changing the current status quo for labor conditions common in data work. With a BA in computer science from Wellesley College, Annabel builds tools, workflows, and systems, to complement the theoretical paradigms she uncovers through fours years of workplace ethnography with the Atlanta, GA-based DataWorks organization. DataWorks is a combined work-training program and data services provider. Annabel has helped build the organization through client management and developed & taught courses for critical data literacy and general data skills. Beyond DataWorks, Annabel has co-taught or TA’d eight courses, with students ranging from elementary to post-secondary. Providing the next generation of computer scientists (and specifically data scientists) with a robust social conscience is a priority and she plans to continue in academia post-PhD as a result. In addition to research positions at Georgia Tech and Wellesley, she has held visiting researcher positions in Germany and Finland and is passionate about cross-cultural education and building international research collaborations and networks. Her work has been published in ACM CHI and ACM CSCW.

Kaelyn Sanders is a Ph.D. Candidate (ABD) in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. Using critical and intersectional frameworks, Kaelyn’s research sits at the nexus of community supervision, reintegration, and inequality, and her dissertation research will qualitatively explore digital inequality among Black men and women on parole in Michigan. Kaelyn’s past research has been published in the Journal of Criminal Justice, Feminist Criminology, and the Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy. As a Ph.D. Candidate, Kaelyn has worked on program evaluation projects for community-based reentry and gun violence programs in the state of Michigan and serves as the graduate assistant for her program’s Prospective Doctoral Student Recruitment and Retention Program Grant. In this role, she works to increase DEI in her graduate program by meeting with students at minority-serving institutions and assessing areas where current graduate students can be better supported. She previously held a summer graduate research associate position at Arnold Ventures working on their pretrial justice team and interned at a local probation and reentry program in Lansing, Michigan. Kaelyn is also a 2024 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, and an alumni of The Ohio State University, where she received her B.A. in Sociology and Criminology.

I am a PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, advised by Prof. Amy Ogan and Prof. Jessica Hammer. I also collaborate closely with Prof. Motahhare Eslami. My research is at the intersection of human-computer interaction, responsible AI, and learning science. With a commitment to social justice, I research positioning people as technosocial change agents. I do this through working with stakeholders to investigate and (co-)design empowering, playful, and informative experiences with and about computing technology. I focus on marginalized youth, since they are regularly impacted by computing but not often recognized as important stakeholders and contributors to the future of responsible AI. My research has been published in top tier HCI and learning science venues and has been awarded at ACM CHI and CSCW. In my past, I received my BA with a double major in computer science and psychology from Mount Holyoke College and then was a Fulbright research scholar in Germany. I was a research intern with Google's TASC (Technology, AI, Society, Culture) team, and I am currently a CERES scholar with the Jacobs Foundation.

Alicia is currently a Ph.D. student at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley, formally advised by Laurent El Ghaoui and affiliated with Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab. She received a B.B.A. degree in International Business from National Taiwan University and an M.S. degree in Information Management and Systems from UC Berkeley. Her primary research interests include gaining a better understanding of the theory, optimization, and behavior of AI systems, and the robustness and sparsity issues in ML algorithms. Alicia has served as the executive board member of Women in Machine Learning, the founding board member of Taiwan Data Science Association, and the founder of Women in Data Science (WiDS) Taipei. She has worked as a research intern at Google DeepMind, an ML engineer intern at Apple, an applied scientist intern at Amazon, and an investment associate at Cherubic Ventures.

As a Masters of Engineering student at the University of Louisville specializing in energy and circuit board design, I bring 3 years of engineering design experience in these fields. My technical expertise complements my role as the founder of RoadPitch, where I organize multi-city pitch tours connecting Black tech founders with investors across the U.S. Our initiative, described as "The Amazing Race meets Shark Tank" for entrepreneurs, has successfully introduced over 100 Black tech entrepreneurs to $75 million in funding. RoadPitch has also established partnerships with prominent organizations like the Blacks in Technology Foundation and Amazon Web Services. This unique combination of technical knowledge and entrepreneurial acumen allows me to bridge the gap between innovative engineering solutions and business opportunities in the tech industry.

Jesse Dukes is a journalist who has done (nearly) all the jobs in podcasting and audio including producer, editor, executive producer, reporter, mix engineer, and teacher. He was the lead producer for WBEZ’s award winning Motive and Curious City podcast between 2015 and 2022. Along with other projects, He’s currently working with the Teaching System’s Lab at MIT on The Homework Machine, a research and podcasting project about the arrival of generative AI in schools. He has taught audio storytelling at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke and Denison University.

Tara García Mathewson covers the intersection of technology and education for CalMatters and The Markup. She has been writing about schools for more than a decade, first as a local reporter in Chicago’s northwest suburbs and then nationally. Her reporting has informed local and statewide policy as well as academic research and helped parents and educators better serve and advocate for the children in their care. Before joining the staff of The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom challenging technology to serve the public good, Tara worked at The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit newsroom focused on innovation and inequality in education, where she explored the “Future of Learning” in K-12 schools and helped establish Hechinger’s investigative team. CalMatters acquired The Markup in July 2024. Tara has been recognized for her beat reporting as well as features and investigations into the educational technology industry, school discipline, and other topics. Her work has appeared in a variety of regional and national news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe Magazine, USA Today, and Wired. She grew up in rural western New York and studied journalism and sociology at Northwestern University. She speaks English and Spanish and lives in New York City.

Meghan is a DC based investigative journalist from Alaska, whose reporting focuses on technology, Indigenous communities, and human rights. Most recently, she completed a one year fellowship with the Scripps News National Investigative Unit, where she worked on broadcast and documentary investigations as a reporter, producer, and on-air correspondent. Prior to this role, she led a six month series with the Solutions Journalism Initiative and Indian Country Today, focused on the long-term impacts of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act — a complex law that established Alaska’s unique land policy and economic system. The series won six national awards and four local awards, including an Edward R Murrow award for best news series within her region. Meghan started her career in journalism as a reporting fellow for the NBC News Business and Technology Unit, and by working part time for the NBC News Bay Area Investigative Unit during her senior year of college. In 2022, she was named an emerging journalist in the Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards, and in 2020 she received the Cronkite Award for Aspiring Foreign Correspondents from the Overseas Press Club. Meghan graduated from Stanford University with Honors in International Relations in 2019. She is a member of the Indigenous Journalists Association, the National Press Club, the Overseas Press Club, and Investigative Reporters and Editors, and is a board member of the Alaska Native Media Association. She produces stories in video and digital formats, and plans to continue working as an independent investigative reporter throughout the upcoming year.

In another life, Tasmiha was a medical school student before realizing she could create more effective change through writing. Prior to that she was in public health and the international non-profit space where she was invited to the White House multiple times for her work internationally. She has published in The New York Times, Washington Post, TIME, Engadget, IBM, Mozilla Firefox, Trust Machines and Forbes, among others. Currently, Tasmiha covers a wide range of topics related to social issues and its intersection with tech, health, race, politics, culture, and religion. Tasmiha was named a Fellow for Knight Science Journalism at MIT and The Donald W. Reynolds School of Journalism and was also a Higher Education Media Fellow at the Institute for Citizens & Scholars along with a fellow from the Education Writers Association. A grantee of The National Press Foundation and the National Press Club Journalism Institute, her reporting has been supported by the Center for Health Journalism as well as the Pulitzer Center. She is also a recipient of the COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists by The National Geographic Society. Most recently, she completed a fellowship awarded by Columbia Journalism School’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights. Follow Tasmiha at www.TasmihaKhan.com and Twitter/X at @CraftOurStory.

Ethan Bakuli is an award-winning, Detroit-based independent journalist who reports on race and equity issues across education, business and the environment. With over five years of experience in breaking news, in-depth enterprising writing, and investigative reporting, Ethan has spearheaded and collaborated on several high-profile reporting projects for local and national newsrooms. Fueled by a passion for exploring the intersections of demographics, place, and history, Ethan has leveraged his role as a reporter to document the experiences and perspectives of marginalized communities. His reporting has been recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Michigan Press Association. His most recent reporting has focused on community resilience against flooding and air pollution in Metro Detroit, workforce development strategies for under skilled working adults, and student absenteeism in high-poverty school districts. Previously, Ethan was a K-12 education reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit and a general assignment reporter for the Burlington Free Press. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and Afro-American Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.