Madeline Adee is a Health Policy PhD student at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, with a specialization in Population Health and Data Science. Her research focuses on improving public health interventions and healthcare for people involved in the criminal justice system. She is also interested in the implementation process of prison reform programs and policies, including decarceration, and how these efforts can improve health and reduce health disparities. Prior to starting her PhD, she worked on studies assessing the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of different hepatitis C...
Berkeley Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System Fellow
Social Welfare, UC Berkeley
Neena Albarus is a Ph.D. student in Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. She has a Master of Social Work from The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. Additionally, she has contributed to academia by instructing courses in the field of social work. Her research portfolio spans quantitative, qualitative, and participatory methods, with a focus on critical social issues such as substance use, mental health, and social violence in Jamaica. She is interested in integrating computational tools for social justice advancement.
Berkeley Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System Fellow
Statistics, UC Berkeley
Alex is a PhD candidate in the Statistics department at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on explainability, fairness, and auditing in machine learning. Most recently, he has worked on leveraging longitudinal data to improve feasibility in counterfactual explanations. Alex also was a member of the inaugural cohort of the AI Policy Hub, where he worked on policy proposals regarding explanations from AI decision-makers. Prior to his PhD program, Alex received a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Howard University.
Elizabeth Breen is a PhD student in the Sociology and Demography departments at UC Berkeley. Her research interests center on the social and historical determinants of human health, particularly the distribution and repercussions of infectious disease. Her current project examines the internalization of neoliberal economic ideology and its effects on workers’ fundamental social ties, like those to family, friends, and broader communities, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Breen's faculty mentors at UC Berkeley are Professors Christopher Muller and Laura Enriquez....
Berkeley Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System Fellow
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), UC Berkeley
David Minh-Duy Cao is a first-year PhD student in Computer Science. His research work aims to engage the intersection between computing and social justice, designing computing and programming tools to reify just futures and empower minoritized communities towards self-determination. Prior to beginning his PhD, he received majors in Computer Science (B.S.) and Ethnic Studies (B.A.) from UC San Diego. His current computing interests draw from his prior research work, which focused on using program synthesis and programming languages research to improve programming accessibility. He has...
Caitlin Chan is a PhD student in the division of epidemiology at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, under the mentorship of Dr. Jennifer Ahern. Her research seeks to explore the epidemiological underpinnings of transmission of trauma through communities by untangling the relationships between violence, trauma, economic adversity, and institutional marginalization. She is particularly interested in understanding who is most likely to be missing from conventional sources of epidemiological data on violence, and how to improve public health surveillance of these vulnerable individuals....
Alagia Justice Cirolia is a combined MSW/PhD student in UC Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare. Their research interests center on improving school equity through the implementation of school-based mental health and wellness programs serving marginalized youth & families, particularly through research-practice partnerships. In addition, Cirolia hones their clinical interests in trauma-informed care and school social work. Cirolia holds a BA in Cognitive Science with High Honors from UC Berkeley. With support from their faculty mentor, Dr. Valerie Shapiro, Cirolia aims to conduct...
Monica De La Cruz is a PhD student in the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare. She holds an MPH from the University of San Francisco and a BS from San Francisco State University. Her research interests focus on ways to ameliorate economic inequality as a means to positively impact children’s health, specifically for communities of color. Prior to coming to Berkeley, she was the Program Manager for the Pediatric Advocacy Program at the Stanford School of Medicine. While at Stanford, Monica worked on an interdisciplinary team examining the impact of local interventions on addressing basic...
Berkeley Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System Fellow
Political Science, UC Berkeley
Pia Deshpande is a Political Science PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley. She is broadly interested in race, political behavior, and social inequity in American Politics. So far, she has worked on projects examining white American reactions to demographic change, narrative techniques to reduce prejudice against different outgroups, and asymmetric political mobilization as a result of elite weaponization of language. She is starting new work on evictions leading to political disenfranchisement. Before starting at Berkeley, Pia worked as an academic researcher at the...
Benjamin Fields is a PhD student in the sociology department at the University of California, Berkeley. A health-oriented social scientist, he wants to focus his research on a social understanding of diet and its relationship to well-being, looking beyond the physiological definition of food towards one that includes social, cultural, political, and economic considerations.