Hi, I’m Vyoma!

Vyoma at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco

I’m a PhD student in Information Science at Cornell Tech (NYC), advised by the brilliant and kind Angelina Wang.

About (Professional)

I study natural language processing with the goal of promoting rights and preventing injustice, and I’m very grateful to be a NSF Graduate Research Fellow and a Cornell Graduate School Dean’s Scholar. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the ways that language model alignment approaches unwittingly reify power structures—and how to modify those approaches to unravel them instead.

I recently completed my master’s degree in computer science at Stanford University. During that time, I was fortunate to be generously advised by Diyi Yang, Dan Ho, Dan Jurafsky, and Alfredo Artiles and partially supported by Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI. Prior to that, I earned bachelor’s degrees in computer science and interdisciplinary studies at UC Berkeley, where I was supported by a Google Lime Scholarship and the invaluable mentorship of Dan Klein, Shreeharsh Kelkar, Rediet Abebe, and Alexa Koenig.

I am affiliated with UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center, where I research the human rights impacts of language models under the guidance of Betsy Popken. I have previously interned at Microsoft working on responsible AI and at 81cents (acquired by Rora) working toward closing the wage gap.

About (Fun)

I moonlight as a satire writer and columnist and am deeply passionate about disability justice. In my spare time, I read, watch, and orchestrate (aka host dinner parties for) murder mysteries. I also enjoy reading absurdist satire and urban fantasy, and I’m on a quest to find the best hot chocolate in New York City (my picks for Berkeley and Palo Alto).

Disability Culture

My work beyond research is guided by the belief that strong disability self-identity enables collective advocacy and helps sustain disability justice within a healthy democracy. Previously, I was a graduate student coordinator for Stanford’s Disability Community (DisCo) Space, where my efforts to engage Stanford students with disability culture both locally and globally were honored with a Stanford Community Impact Award and the James W. Lyons Award for Service. I have since remained engaged in disability spaces at Cornell.

I have also attempted to be an active creator of disability culture. My opinion column “Along for the Ride” in the Daily Californian was honored by the California College Media Association and the California News Publishers Association. I’ve also written reviews and satire highlighting disability issues in everyday situations.

Mentors

I wouldn’t be who I am today without the mentorship of those further along in their academic journeys, who generously gave their time and energy to mentor me in official and unofficial capacities. In roughly chronological order, they include: Ceren Fitoz, Sabina Nong, Jean Li, Grace Lin, Emma Lurie, Ezinne Nwankwo, Eve Fleisig, Caleb Ziems, Will Held, Camille Harris, Lucy Li, Haley Lepp, and Kaitlyn Zhou.

Publications