Ro Encarnación

Where I’m at – I am a PhD student in the Penn HCI lab and am fortunate to be advised by Dr. Metaxa. My research interests are in transdisciplinary action research at the intersection of algorithmic justice for historically excluded communities, public sector AI policy, and HCI. I am interested in addressing unobservable and complex bias and inequity in AI systems broadly, and public-sector sociotechnical decision-making systems, in particular. My ultimate goal is to bridge community-engaged sociotechnical action research with practical technology policy and AI governance.

I received a 2024 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) award and am kindly supported by a GEM fellowship.

Where I’ve been – My research journey began in the DS3 program at Microsoft Research NYC (I recommend all interested undergrads apply!). Before Penn, I had the privilege and opportunity to serve as a TechCongress Congressional Innovation Fellow in the office of Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke. I’ve also worked as a software engineer at the Stanford Computational Policy Lab, Capital One, and as a Civic Technology Fellow at Microsoft Cities.

Where my roots are – I was born, raised, and educated in the Bronx and am a proud NYC public school system and CUNY grad. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from CUNY Lehman College.