I'm an assistant professor at MIT EECS' Faculty of AI and Decision Making and CSAIL, and I was previously a visiting researcher at Google working on Auto Arborist.
I’ve always loved the natural world, and I've seen
a growing need for technology-based approaches to conservation and
sustainability challenges.
My research focuses on building computer vision methods that enable global-scale
environmental and biodiversity monitoring across data modalities, tackling real-world challenges including strong
spatiotemporal correlations that lead to domain shift, imperfect data quality, fine-grained categories,
and long-tailed distributions. I received my PhD in Computing and Mathematical Sciences (CMS) at
Caltech, advised by
Pietro Perona, where I received the Amori Doctoral Prize for my dissertation.
I was honored to be awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the PIMCO Data Science Fellowship
and the Amazon AI4Science Fellowship,
which recognize senior graduate students that have had a remarkable impact in machine learning and data science,
and in their application to fields beyond computer science.
My work has been supported by the NSF, Google, Microsoft, IBM, MIT J-WAFS, and the Caltech Resnick Sustainability Institute.
I seek to break down knowledge barriers between fields: I founded the successful
AI for Conservation
slack community (with over 2000 members), I am the Biodiversity Community Lead for Climate Change AI,
and I am the founding director of the
Caltech Summer School on Computer Vision Methods for Ecology.
I work closely with Microsoft AI for Good,
Google Research,
and Wildlife Insights
where I help turn my research into usable tools for the ecological community.
I believe STEM should be accessible to all, regardless of gender, race, age,
nationality, sexuality, or religion. My experiences as a professional ballerina,
a nontraditional student, and a queer woman have taught me the value of unique and
diverse perspectives, both inside and outside of the research community. I am passionate
about increasing diversity and inclusion in STEM through mentorship, teaching, and outreach,
and was honored to have my DEI efforts recognized with the
inaugural Caltech Computing and Mathematical Sciences Department Gradient for Change Award
and the inaugural Caltech Engineering and Applied Science Division New Horizons Award.