Tidbits of Research

My guest today is Dr. Manish Raghavan, Assistant Professor, Information Technology at MIT. 

When we were having our conversation he had just graduated with his PhD from Cornell University, and in the meantime he has finished his postdoc at the Harvard Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS). 

We talk about his research on the societal impacts of algorithmic decision making, the importance of having a supportive and flexible PhD advisor, the fact that in a world with biases (like ours) it’s impossible to build a model that hides those biases, and so much more. 

This was such a wonderful chat, and I’m delighted to finally be able to share it. Even though it was recorded over a year and a half ago, it feels like a timeless classic, as these topics are still relevant (perhaps even more so). So many things stood out to me, but the thing I’d like to end this episode on is related to Manish’s comment on the importance of having good mentors. They’re hard to find, but they can really help you flourish.

You can follow Manish Raghavan on Twitter. 

Our music is "float-and-fly" by goldguardtele. 

This episode was edited by Noah Lloyd. 

My guest today is Dr. Elisa Granato, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. She received her PhD at Life Science Zurich Graduate School, University of Zurich, her Master of Science in Microbiology and Immunology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, and her Bachelor of Science in Biology, at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. She was awarded a FEMS Early Career Microbiologist award for her contributions to the field of microbiology. 

You can follow Elisa Granato on Twitter, for more microbiology tidbits, but also more of her adorable 2 cats.

Our music is "float-and-fly" by goldguardtele. 

This episode was edited by Noah Lloyd. 

My guest today is Dr. Wanyi Dai Li. She’s a research scientist at Meta in the Novi Economics Team. She has a PhD in operations management from Stanford University Management Science and Engineering Department, and graduated from Wellesley College in 2016 with a major in Physics and a minor in Computer Science. She was a research fellow at the world agroforestry center, a pro bono consultant for the One Acre Fund, and a co-organizer of Mechanism Design for Social Good. 

Our chat today touches on a lot of topics. 

We talk about her research interests, how she decided to pursue her PhD (wonderfully enough, podcasts were a part of this), her starting a new research agenda, connecting two different communities, her work with NGOs, and also her pottery hobby, her appreciation for the liberal arts education, and her involvement in sustainability. 

My guest today is Dr. Kaela Singleton, a developmental neuroscientist, currently completing her postdoctoral training at Emory University. Interested in understanding how the brain forms in normal and pathological conditions, she’s currently investigating mitochondria integrity and localization in Menkes Disease, a rare neurodegenerative disorder that affects the development of children. She’s a Black, Samoan, and Queer woman, grew up in Grayson, Georgia, got her Bachelor of Science from Agnes Scott College, majoring in Neuroscience and Classical History and Culture, and got her PhD in Neuroscience from Georgetown University. Currently, she’s also an adjunct professor at Agnes Scott College, a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Postdoctoral Enrichment fellow as well as co-founder and President-Elect of Black In Neuro.

We talk about her current work on Menkes Disease, her motivation to understand what makes a person a person, her passion for science accessibility, but also her search for a community within neuroscience, and the importance of sharing with others in academia not only when things are rough, but also when things are working out. 

You can follow her on Twitter, @kss_phd.

Our music is “float-and-fly” by goldguardtele.

My guest today is Emily Riehl, Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University. Her research is on higher category theory and homotopy theory, and we dive into category theory in our chat: what it is, what category theorists do, what kinds of questions she’s interested in answering (which also brings us to higher dimensional categories, so stay tuned for that!). She received the Association for Women in Mathematics’ 2021 Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry, she’s a co-host of the n-Category Café and was a founding member of Spectra.

We also talk about a few of the mathematical books she’s written, what playing Australian rules football was like (other than tons of fun), but also her interest in music (her old band, Unstraight, just released the EP they started recording back in 2015, and you can check it out here).

Our music is “float-and-fly” by goldguardtele.

My guest today is Dr. Madalina Vlasceanu, a NYU Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow working in the Social Neuroscience Lab directed by Prof. David Amodio, where she’ll be working on biases in AI and how algorithms propagate human biases. Originally from Romania (so interviewing her was particularly exciting for me), she got her PhD from the Departments of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University, and she also received an MA in Cognitive Psychology from Princeton University and a BA in Psychology and Economics from the University of Rochester.

We talk today about concrete tools she can employ as a cognitive scientist to decrease belief in false information, her exploring new research interests after finishing her PhD, as well as how people incorporate direct evidence to change their beliefs and whether the source of the information or evidence matters (spoilers, it sure does!).

You can follow Madalina Vlasceanu on Twitter, @vlasceanu_mada. 

Our music is “float-and-fly” by goldguardtele.

My guest today is Drea Darby, a doctoral student in entomology at Cornell University working on host-microbe-environment interactions, as well as a recipient of a 2020 Ford Foundation predoctoral Fellowship. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We chat about vinegar flies (and I get a bit of a crash course in transgenic fruit flies), the moment she realized she wants to do research, as well as her advocacy for including the history of science in the scientific curriculum. A “trailblazer for her family” (in her words), Drea talks about her experience being a first generation college graduate, her transition from planning to attend nursing school to becoming a bio major (and later on planning to pursue a PhD), and her goal to “be the thing she didn’t have in her life” as a Black and Filipino woman interested in science.

I am joined today by Dr. Jennifer Pierre, a human-computer interaction researcher and information scientist, currently working as a user experience researcher at Google. She received her PhD from the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, holds a Masters of Library & Information Science from the same department, and a Bachelor of Science in Communication from Cornell University. Broadly, her work examines how people use social, digital, and interactive media to form and maintain communities.

We talk today about her interest in understanding how people work, in studying how day-to-day life intersects with technology, how she figured out that she wanted to pursue the PhD path, as well as part of her teaching philosophy, on the importance of transformative learning experiences.

You can follow her on Twitter, @drjenpierre.

Our music is “float-and-fly” by goldguardtele. 

My guest is Eve Vavagiakis, a Provost Diversity Fellow who recently defended her PhD thesis in the Physics Department at Cornell University. She works in Professor Michael Niemack’s experimental cosmology and astrophysics lab. She’s Co-Director of ParticleBites, the high energy physics reader’s digest blog, Co-lead of the Simons Observatory Education and Public Engagement Working Group, has done lots of cool outreach including a book for children on neutrinos.

We talk about how we actually don’t yet know how much space stuff there is, how looking at the cosmic microwave background (CMB) helps us understand galaxy evolution, what information the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) has been giving us, but also what being part of the team building the ultimate telescope is like, or the importance of starting research as an undergrad. 

If you want to know more about the data products from ACT that we talk about in the episode, they can be found here: https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/act/.

You can follow her on Twitter, @EveVavagiakis.

Our music is “float-and-fly” by goldguardtele.

My guest today is Nancy Ruiz, a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Chris Schaffer. She’s currently working in understanding vascular inflammation and capillary stalling in Alzheimer’s disease mouse models. We talk today about biomedical imaging and its application to understanding Alzheimer’s disease better, Nancy Ruiz's process of exploring her research interests and deciding to work in biomedical engineering, as well as her involvement in different science communication initiatives.

You can follow her on Twitter, @NancyRuizU.

Our music is “float-and-fly” by goldguardtele.