As a science writer and analyst at Rose Li and Associates (RLA) specializing in AI ethics and governance, I support federal agencies and initiatives pursuing responsible AI policy and conducting research on AI impacts. I contribute science and policy research, analysis, and strategic communications; project coordination; and subject matter expertise. Key projects include:
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) AI Innovation Lab (NAIIL)
I lead the support RLA provides for NIST’s portfolio of AI programs, including the AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) and the National AI Advisory Committee (NAIAC). I work closely with NIST staff as an agency-credentialed contractor to conduct research and analysis, draft policy documents and other strategic communications, establish project priorities, and ensure alignment of these efforts with applicable federal law and executive directives, including the National AI Initiative Act (2020) and the AI Action Plan (2025).
National Institute of Aging (NIA) AI and Technology Coordinating Center (AITCC)
I serve as the AITCC AI Ethics Lead, providing project coordination and writing support for AITCC initiatives that address the ethical development of AI-driven AgeTech.
National Science Foundation (NSF) Industries of Ideas (IofI) Initiative
I develop strategic communications and outreach materials for a $10 million NSF initiative assessing the regional workforce impacts of NSF research investments in emerging technologies.
RLA AI Governance Taskforce
I serve on an internal cross-divisional AI governance team developing and implementing an AI risk assessment and management framework aligned with the NIST AI RMF to ensure the responsible use of AI in RLA operations.
Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), Stanford University
I was a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with HAI between September 2020 and January 2023, working on a multidisciplinary team of computer scientists, humanists, and social scientists led by Dan Jurafsky and Lanier Anderson. Our group was one of the inaugural recipients of the Hoffman-Yee Research Grant, which sponsors interdisciplinary AI research. Our team pursued a ranged of projects with a common goal of investigating conceptual change over time, as well as how LLMs represent these dynamics. I contributed to research in political and legal theory that explored how variation in the use of conceptual language across a population and over time might have implications for the process of legal interpretation. In addition to my role as a postdoctoral researcher, I also served as project coordinator between September 2020 and October 2021.
>> Video: Our group presenting at the 2021 Hoffman-Yee Symposium (begin at 42.00)
Department of Political Science, Stanford University
I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford in September 2020, graduating with a focus in political theory as well as a certificate in computational social science. My dissertation research investigates the individual motivations and social conditions for political cooperation, with a particular focus on developing a conceptual framework to theorize about democratic stability and norms of political legitimacy and authority. My work synthesizes methods and insights across a range of disciplines, addressing questions in normative political theory and intellectual history by drawing on computational methods of text analysis, as well as findings from formal theory and empirical political science.
>> Article (open access): the first chapter of my dissertation appeared in American Political Science Review in August 2021. The paper investigates private rationality as a motivation for democratic cooperation and, in doing so, critiques Rawls’s characterization of rationality.
>> Book Chapter: joint research conducted with Alison McQueen that employs computational analysis of 17th century public discourse to shed new light on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Edited volume derives from a 2021 British Academy Conference titled Quentin Skinner’s ‘Meaning and Understanding’ After 50 Years: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.
I was awarded the Stanford Humanities Center Dissertation Prize Fellowship (2019-2020), intended to recognize doctoral students in the humanities “whose work is of the highest distinction and promise." I also received the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship (2016-2019), which recognizes “outstanding doctoral students pursuing questions that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries.”
I received my B.A. with Honors in History from Stanford University in 2011, and was awarded the James Birdsall Weter Prize for Outstanding History Honors Thesis.