Research Experiences
Human-AI Collaboration Lab
I am currently working at the Human-AI Collaboration Lab with Dr. Matt Groh and Aakriti Kumar to research how large language model role playing games (LLM RPGs) can help people improve their empathic communication. The motivation for this project comes from a paper published by Yin et al., which suggests that LLMs are more effective than humans at making people heard, but people aren’t comfortable sharing their troubles with LLMS due to lack of authenticity. We hope our study will help people better respond to their loved ones’ troubles, and that there will be increased access to effective to empathic communications coaching online. We are currently collaborating with Dr. Bruce Lambert and Dr. Diyi Yang to develop a reliable framework for evaluating the quality of empathic communication, and to design digital and in-person experiments to measure the effectiveness of different forms of feedback on empathy over time.
NU Tech Ethics Initiative
I am also a course mentor and initiative coordinator of the NU Tech Ethics Initiative, where I work closely with faculty and students to incorporate ethics into Northwestern University’s computer science curriculum. Over the past two years, I have worked on integrating ethics into Northwestern's Fundamentals of Computer Programming I, Data Structures and Algorithms, Machine Learning, and Introduction to Artificial Intelligence courses. I also worked with our faculty advisor to secure $12500 in funding from Northwestern University's Alumnae Award, and maintained a resource hub for members of the computer science community to find resources on how they can embed ethics into their own work in the tech industry.
Spatial Thinking and Reasoning Lab
I was a research assistant at the Spatial Thinking and Reasoning Lab, where I worked with Kiley McKee and Danielle Rothschild Doyle to research individual differences in spatial assembly patterns among children and undergraduate students using the block design task. We presented our poster on Using Specially Engineered Blocks to Measure Differences in Spatial Cognitive Processes at the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences Conference 2023. In 2024, we also presented our poster on Investigating Individual Differences in Block Assembly Strategies to the Midwest Psychology Association Conference 2024.