Hima LakkarajuView profile
Assistant Professor
Dr. Hima Lakkaraju is an Assistant Professor at Harvard University with joint appointments in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Business School , focusing on the algorithmic foundations and societal implications of trustworthy AI. She also serves as a Senior Staff Research Scientist (part-time) at Google. Her research spans machine learning, optimization, human-subject studies, and AI policy , with applications in healthcare, law, and business. Education : PhD in Computer Science, Stanford University Prior Roles : Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Adobe, Fiddler AI Dr. Lakkaraju's work emphasizes safe, fair, and interpretable AI , addressing critical questions about human-AI collaboration, model robustness, and regulatory compliance. She leads the AI4LIFE research group and co-founded the Trustworthy ML Initiative to democratize access to responsible AI research. Her research is supported by NSF, Sloan Foundation, Schmidt Sciences, Google, OpenAI, Amazon, JP Morgan, Adobe, Bayer, Harvard Data Science Initiative, and D^3 Institute . Recent publications (2025) explore reward hacking in LLMs, unified attribution frameworks, memory systems in AI agents, and science-based AI policy . Earlier works (2024) focus on medical safety benchmarks, CLIP interpretation, and generalization complexity . Her work has been featured in major media outlets including New York Times, TIME, MIT Tech Review, and Fortune . Scientific Awards : Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (2025), NSF CAREER Award (2023), MIT Tech Review 35 Innovators (2019), Google Anita Borg Fellowship (2015) Grants & Funding : NSF, Google, Amazon, JP Morgan, Adobe, Schmidt Sciences Dr. Lakkaraju advises a diverse team of postdocs, PhD, and master's students working on foundational and applied aspects of trustworthy machine learning. She teaches courses like Introduction to Data Science and Explainable AI at Harvard and Stanford.







