معرفی
Emma Pierson is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds a parallel appointment as Assistant Professor at Cornell Tech (Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute) with a secondary joint position in Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College. She is affiliated with the Berkeley AI Research Lab, Computational Precision Health, and the Center for Human-Compatible AI.
Education & Career Path:
- PhD in Computer Science, Stanford University (Jure Leskovec lab)
- MSc in Statistics, University of Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar)
- Former Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research New England
- Former Data Scientist, 23andMe and Coursera
Research Focus: Professor Pierson develops machine-learning techniques to advance health and social science, with a strong emphasis on reducing inequality and improving healthcare delivery. She leverages large language models, sparse autoencoders, and other modern tools to uncover hidden biases, design fairer algorithms, and generate novel scientific hypotheses from complex datasets.
Across more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, her work repeatedly combines computational innovation with real-world impact—from documenting racial inequities in pain management (Nature Medicine, 2021) to modeling COVID-19 disparities (Nature, 2021) and quantifying urban segregation via mobility networks (Nature, 2023). Recent trends show an intensified focus on LLM-driven discovery and evidence-based AI policy, with forthcoming papers in Science (2025) and New England Journal of Medicine AI (2025).
Scientific Honors:
- NSF CAREER Award
- Rhodes Scholarship & Hertz Fellowship
- MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35
- Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science
- AI2050 Early Career Fellowship
- Samsung AI Researcher of the Year (2023)
- Best Paper Awards – KDD, AISTATS, CHIL
Advising & Funding: Prof. Pierson is actively recruiting PhD students for Fall 2026 and welcomes post-doctoral researchers, master’s students, and undergraduates. Her group is supported by the NSF, the AI2050 program, and various industry and philanthropic partners.
Labs & Teams: She leads an interdisciplinary research group spanning UC Berkeley EECS and Cornell Tech. Collaborations include clinicians at UCSF and Weill Cornell, social scientists at Stanford, and policy experts at the Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI.
