MIT undergrad. FAANG internships. Antitrust economic consulting. Stanford PhD candidacy. No question Allison Koenecke is an academic force. Beyond impressive institutional associations -- which she seldom spotlights -- what has made her a true force of nature (or shall we say, software?) is the research she's leading to address equitability in mainstream technologies. Specifically, Allison's bringing visibility to the blind spots tech companies have been operating with while training their machine learning models. For instance, did you know voice assistants (i.e. Siri, Alexa) register twice as many errors when processing African American colloquial English? Allison is a researcher who's working towards a tech future that is built on the foundation of a more diverse set of colors, creeds, and communities. Beyond chatting about her journey to and within her PhD candidacy at Stanford's Institute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering, we talk about parental expectations, leading teams, and quick tips to getting more done during the day.

More Allison:

Twitter @allisonkoe

Allison's research on racial disparities in automated speech recognition software

PhD Profile

Level up your math & science skills @ brilliant.org (as mentioned in the episode!)

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