2020 Assembly Student Fellowship
Cohort Members
KEMI AKENZUA
Harvard College, 2020
Kemi is a senior studying History and Science, with a focus on Technology Information, and Society. She is so excited to grapple with these important issues with the rest of the student cohort over the course of the year.
SAMUEL CLAY
Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2020
Samuel is a computer engineer with a background in software, hardware, manufacturing, and art. He successfully managed NewsBlur, a news reader and popular successor to Google Reader, and Turn Touch, a wooden home automation remote control. He has also worked in the New York Times newsroom and at Microsoft. He is passionate about building products that act as productivity multipliers.
JESS ENG
Harvard College, 2021
Jess is a junior at Harvard College and studies folklore and mythology, statistics, and computer science, with a keen interest in data visualization, storytelling, teaching, and early education. She believes that compelling and accurate journalism in the age of big data requires studying the practices of oral and literary transmission and storytelling throughout history.
SANJANA PARIKH
Harvard Law School, 2020
A graduate of Stanford University, Sanjana is currently a third-year law student at Harvard Law School, earning a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law as a participant in the Berkeley-Harvard 3L Exchange program. Interested in regulation, she has worked as an economic analyst on cases pending before the FTC and FCC and has researched privacy, platform antitrust, and other technology governance issues in law school. Sanjana has also spent two summers as a Latham & Watkins Diversity Scholar in Washington, D.C. and London, working with the technology transactions and telecommunications practice groups. She currently serves as the Diversity Editor for the California Law Review.
CIERRA ROBSON
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2024
Cierra is a doctoral student in Sociology and Social Policy. She holds a B.A. in African American Studies from Princeton University, where she specialized in studies of race and public policy and pursued a minor in Technology and Society. Broadly, she is interested in how technological advancements both reinforce and revolutionize the American racial order, as well as how public-private collaborations both solidify and make profitable existing power hierarchies. She aims to use her research to conceptualize what meaningful
regulation of Big Tech looks like.
MADELINE SALINAS
Harvard Law School, 2020
Madeline is a third-year law student at Harvard. Prior to law school, she worked as a legal assistant in Washington, D.C. for a law firm specializing in telecommunications regulation. While in law school, she has held internships with the office of the California Attorney General, Center for Democracy and Technology, and Covington & Burling LLP. Through her work, she has researched a range of legal issues related to data privacy, cybersecurity, the ethical use of AI, and surveillance.
MATTHEW FINNEY
Harvard John A. Paulsen School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 2020
Matthew applies data to advise and implement strategic decisions that enhance human outcomes. His current research focuses on statistical methods and computation at scale, as well as the ethical challenges these tools present. Previously, he has led advanced analytics consulting teams, introduced quantitative hypothesis-testing to executive decision making, and researched and developed AI/ML applications. He is currently pursuing his M.S. in Data Science.
MICHAEL JASPER
Harvard College, 2020
Michael is pursuing a B.A. in Social Studies; his research focuses primarily on modernization, development, and neoliberal policies. He has been directly involved in computer science and spent the last four summers working as a software engineer and product manager. He is hoping to conduct his thesis research in Jerusalem next year.
SAHAR KAZRANIAN
Harvard Divinity School, 2020
Harvard Kennedy School, 2020
Sahar focuses on the intersection of technology, policy, and ethics and is particularly interested in developing practical approaches and solutions to the challenges of social media manipulation, online privacy, and civic dialogue. She has extensive experience working in the private, public, and non-profit sectors and presently runs the Dubai-based Middle East Global Advisors, an intelligence platform serving emerging markets. She holds a B.A. (Hons) from the University of Toronto and an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics.
JAYSHREE SARATHY
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2024
Jayshree is a doctoral student in Computer Science advised by professors Salil Vadhan and Jonathan Zittrain. She is affiliated with the Theory of Computation Group and the Privacy Tools Project. Her research interest include data privacy, cryptography, and the intersections of law and policy. She is particularly interested in studying tradeoffs such as open access versus privacy and anonymity versus authenticity.
FLORA WANG
Harvard Law School, 2020
After graduating with honors from Stanford University, Flora studied China's first domestic violence law as a Fulbright Scholar and worked as a legal analyst in New York. Currently a third-year law student at Harvard, Flora is particularly interested in privacy and digital liberties. She is a member of the Podcast Content Team for the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, examined voting and cybersecurity issues through the Berkman Klein Center, and worked on digital surveillance at the Center for Democracy and Technology. She participated in the Harvard Association of Law and Business Japan Trek and will be competing in the 2020 CPR International Mediation Competition in Brazil.
SANDHIRA WIJAYARATNE
Harvard Medical School, 2020
Sandhira is a fourth-year student at Harvard Medical School. With a background in public health, he is interested in the intersection of culture and social media-fueled disinformation, particularly in how these connections result in mental health impact and violence.
CHRISTINE KEUNG
Harvard Business School, 2020
A graduate of Wellesley College, Christine began her professional career at Dropbox, where she worked on global legal, security, and privacy issues. She was also the Head of Operations at Fountain, a growth-stage AI/ML startup. A Fulbright Fellow, Christine trawled to China and set up a watershed restoration project with farmers in rural areas; her work garnered funding and recognition from National Geographic, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations. She is the youngest person to win the Rolex Awards for Enterprise and in 2017, she was recognized as a Next Generation Leader by TIME Magazine.
NATALIE MARGULIES
Harvard College, 2021
Natalie spent the past two summers working as a data scientist at Facebook. Her time there showed her the immense power of data analysis in enacting societal change; however, it also showed her the tremendous potential of misuse in data analytics. Her work at Facebook highlighted the importance of studying data not from a technical perspective, but also through an ethical, legal, philosophical, and economic lens, in order to enact positive societal change.
JENNIFER NILSEN
Harvard Kennedy School, 2020
Jennifer Nilsen is a second-year student at the Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, she worked for the Minneapolis Public Schools and in Minneapolis non-profit organizations. Outside of work and school, Jen likes to read, run, and make pottery.
MICHAEL WORNOW
Harvard College, 2020
Michael is pursuing a joint concentration in Computer Science and Statistics. He is interested in the intersection of technology and policy, particularly from the perspective of cybersecurity. He's also fascinated by computational biology and is writing his thesis on applying machine learning techniques to predict the binding affinities of nucleic acid polymers. Besides following politics and reading FiveThirtyEight, he spends his free time watching baseball and basketball, as well as helping run government simulation conferences for high schoolers.
TAI WON (TYLER) YOO
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2021
Tyler is pursuing his M.S. at the Harvard Institute for Applied Computational Science and is a member of the 2024 cohort of the Junior Deferral Program at Harvard Law School. He is interested in the intersection between law and technology, especially in legal informatics and computational law. Tyler has a B.S. in Mathematics and a B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford University.