Personal page • applied AI for social good

Building data + AI systems for social good.

Politics can feel like it’s moving faster than anyone can process. The headlines refresh before the context does, and instability—at home and abroad—keeps compounding. In that kind of world, AI has turned into a steady companion: an information hub when you need grounding, and honestly, emotional support when the news won’t stop. It’s evolving faster than it used to, which makes learning with it—and learning to live with it—more important than ever.

The motivation is personal. I’ve seen enough, domestically and internationally, to know how tragic, draining, and difficult some realities can be to sit with. So the question becomes: what if the constructive side of tech power were used well? Countering erosion and polarization, widening awareness, and lowering the friction for people who want to engage. Exposure shapes what people notice and what they care about. The aim here isn’t “cool AI.” It’s using the tools well.

Chief Data Scientist @ PDRI‑DevLab (U. of Penn)
Focus: research + algorithm design • multilingual NLP • deep learning + retrieval • geo/time signals
Open to collaboration • mission‑driven teams • reach out
Outcome map
Problem → method → result → evidence.
monitoring‑grade
Purpose: shape research questions into measurable, accountable signals.
01
Research framing
Define the question, decision stakes, and measurement logic for high‑stakes information environments.
Outcome: hypotheses • definitions • success criteria
02
Method design
Specify data strategy, model/eval plan, and risk controls (bias, drift, uncertainty).
Design: data policy • evaluation • governance
03
Translation
Turn evidence into clear, actionable signals and narratives for partners and the public.
Focus: clarity • accountability • use
04
Accountability
Publish methods and evidence; keep traceability from source to claim.
Artifacts: papers • code • audit trails
Research-driven Evidence-linked Database-first Cloud-scale Performance-tuned Quant + stats

Design systems that can pivot across contexts. From research to production, build with modularity, transparency, and robustness baked in.

Built for places where the cost of being wrong is real—stress-tested and drift-aware, with explainable outputs that support action.

About

Applied science for public‑interest systems: measure, model, deliver.

What I do

I build monitoring‑grade data + AI systems for public‑interest research—multilingual ingestion, event extraction, geo/time analytics, and evaluation harnesses that stay attached in production. The aim is reliable signals that decision‑makers can trust.

Tech side

Alongside applied projects, I chase foundational ML: transformer memory and long‑context modeling, retrieval‑grounded generation, grounded entity linking, and robust signal extraction under noise and drift. I like technical problems that shift capabilities across many systems.

Collaboration

Open to research labs, NGOs, policy teams, and industry partners building high‑stakes information systems. I can help with research design, data systems, modeling, and deployment. Low‑friction contact here.

Deployments

A few papers and notes that reflect the research direction—kept brief and preview-only.

Deployed configurations

Civic space monitoring & forecasts MLP-Civic

Event detection + interpretable early‑warning signals for shifts in protest, restriction, media pressure, and advocacy activity — designed for frequent refreshes and evidence traceability.

Foreign influence & coercive leverage tracking MLP-RAI

Tracks influence patterns across channels (diplomatic / economic / information / cyber) with consistent task definitions, careful normalization, and transparent aggregation.

Climate‑driven disruption & response signals MLEED

Detects environmental shocks and social responses using multilingual event modeling + geo grounding, with downstream time‑series signals for monitoring and analysis.

Subnational disruption monitoring (ADM1) Subnational

Map‑first monitoring at subnational resolution, wired to two‑stage geo reconciliation (country → ADM1), standardized counts, and surge detection for rapid scanning and drill‑down.

These are representative, not exhaustive — the emphasis is on reusable infrastructure that transfers to new domains and stakeholders.

Selected papers & technical notes

Previews only (first 2 pages).

Preview of first page: Modular Gated Attention
Modular Gated Attention: Adaptive Architecture for Flexible Sequence Modeling
Preprint • 2025
Preview of first page: Causal inference methods
Benchmarking Causal Inference Methods for ATE Estimation
Methods note • 2025
Preview of first page: Tracking Civic Space
Tracking Civic Space in Developing Countries with a High‑Quality Corpus of Domestic Media and Transformer Models
Preprint • 2025
Preview of first page: Foreign Influence data
Foreign Influence by Authoritarian Governments: Introducing New Data and Evidence
Working paper • 2024
Preview of first page: DataForUkraine
#DataForUkraine: Adapting Social Science Tools for Crisis Response
Reflection • 2022

If you’re exploring collaborations, I can share additional technical notes (evaluation harnesses, sampling QA playbooks, schema/patch patterns).

Impact themes

Typical problem spaces these systems support.

Civic space & democracy Information integrity Foreign influence Climate risk & adaptation Humanitarian response Auditability