Hi, I’m Ellie.
I am an AI researcher, builder, and aspiring entrepeneur. In general, I am an observant and grounded thinker who searches for nuance and stories in the margins. This theme of looking beyond the surface drives my work.
In tech, I've researched how to use AI to make healthcare more accessible to rural populations, and investigated AI's hidden biases. In my community, I advocate for unhoused youth through Valley Water and work to bring diverse voices into CS through ParagonX and various self-started school organizations. I use photography to capture and highlight the fleeting moments that I find meaningful.
In my opinion, computer vision has the potential to truly shape the world because it gives machines the ability to perceive and understand the physical world, enabling them to solve problems that were once impossible. Inspired by this, my research explores how AI and computer vision can uncover insights in fields like medicine. However, these systems can only improve lives if they are accurate and reliable for everyone.
As AI becomes increasingly embedded in society, I believe it must also be fair and trustworthy. My work ranges from improving heart-rate estimation across diverse skin tones to reducing background bias in action recognition models, with the goal of building AI systems that people can confidently rely on.
Building technology is a way for me to help my community. Everything I build is centered around one question: how can I improve the lives of those around me? This has led me to build an in-page translator for friends learning English, a website to help my friend’s father’s small business reach more customers, and a gaze-tracking communication tool for my grandpa with ALS. In college and beyond, I hope to dedicate myself toward building intelligent human-centered systems that meaningfully improve people’s quality of life.
I was elected to serve as Vice-Chair for Valley Water’s 21-member Youth Commission, representing Santa Clara County’s 2M water consumers. I mentor Youth Commissioners, coordinate quarterly meetings with agency executives aligned to district goals, and lead projects.
With San Jose having one of the highest per capita youth homelessness rates, I led a group of Youth Commissioners to organize a hygiene kit drive for youth facing homelessness. We raised more than $5000 that funded 100 kits, and hand-delivered them to the Bill Wilson Center. Our project helped restore dignity to vulnerable youth across Santa Clara County.
As part of the Data Accessibility Team, I hosted three river cleanups at Alviso Slough and Coyote Creek, removing more than 750 pounds of trash. I coordinated logistics, delivered pre-event briefings to volunteers, and facilitated a trash data collection activity to identify the most common pollutants and discuss ways to reduce them at the source.
Teaching and mentoring students is one of my greatest joys. For me, learning to code and build AI models was transformative because it made me feel like I could build anything. Through teaching USACO Bronze and Intro to Machine Learning classes at ParagonX for two years, I strive to help other students achieve that same agency and confidence. Now, as President, I drive our broader organizational vision — leading the executive team, expanding our global outreach efforts to democratize education, and scaling our curriculum. So far, we have impacted 3,500 students, taught more than 480 classes, and reached 24 countries.
“AI will change the world, but who will change AI?” is a quote by Professor Olga Russakovsky that really resonated with me. At programming competitions and hackathons, I always noticed that it seemed to be dominated by the same narrow demographic. Echoing Professor Russakovsky's words, my goal with this club is to help guide more students into AI, bringing more diverse voices into the field. As President, I prepare and give engaging lectures, demystifying AI and showing them real-world applications, and host games and competitions.
Students at my school had immense scientific curiosity but were unsure how to conduct research. I founded an initiative to help them realize those aspirations. I ran outreach across campus and brought in more than twenty students — triple the previous year’s participation. I organize our weekly meetings and mentor students 1-1 as they develop original projects.
Freshman year, I led a team of four girls with no prior investment experience to become one of the top ten Global Finalists out of more than 1,600 teams. I developed the investment strategy for our client, designed an innovative trading algorithm, and analyzed IT and Consumer Discretionary assets. As team leader, I managed project milestones, fostered a collaborative and positive environment, and kept our team morale high throughout the eight-month competition.
Writing short stories and photography are the ways that I unleash my creativity. My writing explores themes of familial relationships, often echoing my own experiences. In photography, I love being able to slow down and capture the little moments, as well as being creative through digital editing in Photoshop — check out my strawberry panda!
Dance and swimming give me immense joy. I love the adrenaline rush of performing on stage and in the water. Both have also taught me essential skills that have transferred to other areas of my life: teamwork, resilience, and the courage to always keep trying and growing despite there not being immediate results.
