👩🔬 Meet the Current Interns and Student Researchers at the RIL
The Responsible Innovation Lab is powered by a growing team of student innovators and research fellows. Each member contributes to projects that advance ethical AI, sustainability, and community resilience under the INNOVATE(D) framework.
Alex • PIIC & Workforce Development
Alex is the manager of the PIIC program and supports both the NOVA Certification and PIIC Consulting pathways, focusing on ethical governance frameworks and student workforce incubation. He helps align student deliverables to RIL’s INTEGRITY values and public accountability model.
Thaivu • PIIC & Workforce Development
Thaivu graduates this year and is ready to set the innovative world on fire. Hire this one fast. He has been with the lab for over 2 years. Check out his resume and postings on LinkedIn.
Scarlett • Food Insecurity & Campus Advocacy
Scarlett leads the Hunger Free Campus and Food Systems Innovation projects, integrating sustainability, policy design, and student-led advocacy. Her work supports statewide efforts to reduce food insecurity through ethical data design and community partnerships. This is Scarlett’s 3rd cohort with us.
Samantha • Food Insecurity & Campus Advocacy
Samantha works across the Hunger Free Campus / Pitchfork Pantry partnership and HouseKey pilot, helping connect student sustainability initiatives to responsible AI tools. Her research focuses on developing solutions with ethical design thinking for community engagement. This is a multiple semester journey for Samantha.
Priyanka • Health Innovation
Priyanka contributes to the POTS / Long COVID Tracker initiative, developing accessible, privacy-first health technology. Her work integrates human-centered design and ethical AI principles for chronic illness data collection.
Namai • SDG Lurch & PA Chatbot
Namai’s research centers on SDG Lurch and global development alignment. He is looking to extend RIL’s work around responsible innovation research on food insecurity, sustainable food systems and international applied innovation. A number of the features are things we can implement today as we expand the next offering of HouseKey.
Yiyan • AI Personas, Bias Awareness, & Emotional Intelligence in Chatbots
Yiyan contributes to RIL’s technical infrastructure and chatbot deployment pipeline. Her focus is on building accessible, scalable persona systems that are safer and more useful to the individual like products AskMave and HouseKey, ensuring speed with accountability. She has been focused on engagement with various media and personalities. Yiyan has been with the team a year. She has assisted with most of our chatbot implementations.
Mehek • Crisis Delivery Evaluation
Mehek is working on a tangential pathway related to our work with marginalized and more vulnerable populations. She is currently working on IRB submission for the interview analysis segment to aid in responsible innovation research focused on developing solutions to a troublesome intake process.