Bio

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Kellogg School of Management and the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO), where I work with Dr. Matt Groh on developing AI tools to help humans build skills in empathic communication and synthetic media detection.

My research examines the dynamics of human-AI collaboration through large-scale digital experiments, blending insights from cognitive science, human-computer interaction, and machine learning.

I earned my PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of California, Irvine, where I was advised by Dr. Mark Steyvers. I also hold a Master’s degree in Statistics from UCI and got my B.Tech. in Materials Engineering from IIT Madras, India.

You can find my CV here and my publications on Google scholar.

Feel free to reach out to me for collaborations or any inquiries related to my research!

Updates

Nov 2025: I’m presenting my ongoing work on boosting people’s empathic communication skills with LLM role playing games at the CODE@MIT conference.
🎮 Try Lending an Ear to test your empathic communication skills!

Oct 2025: I gave a talk at the DySoc Webinar at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Sept 2025: I gave a talk at the Learn Behavioral Leadership Symposium in Chicago.

May 2025: I gave a lightning talk at the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) seminar.

Feb 2025: I gave a talk at the JTIP Symposium on Navigating Innovation, AI, and Access in a Transforming Legal Landscape.

Aug 2024: I started a new position as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Kellogg School of Management and the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)

Mar 2024: I defended my PhD thesis titled ‘Human Mental Models of Self, Others, and AI Agents’!

Jan 2024: Our paper investigating people’s perceptions of LLM confidence is out! Check it out - The Calibration Gap between Model and Human Confidence in Large Language Models

Apr 2023: I started working as a Human-Computer Interaction Research Intern at Motional!

Jan 2023: Our paper ‘When Do Drivers Intervene In Autonomous Driving? Contrasting Drivers’ Perceived Risk Across Two Mobility Types’ was accepted for publication as a Late Breaking Report at Human-Robot Interaction 2023

Nov 2022: Presented our work on AI-assisted Decision-Making at the Noyce Symposium, UCSB

Oct 2022: Our paper ‘AI-assisted decision-making: A cognitive modeling approach to infer latent reliance strategies ‘ was published in Computational Brain & Behavior

Oct 2022: Our paper ‘Comparing models of learning and relearning in large-scale cognitive training data sets’ was published in NPJ Science of Learning

Jun 2022: Started my internship at Honda Research Insititute in San Jose as a Human Behavior Modeling Intern

Dec 2021: Awarded a fellowship by the Irvine Initiative in AI, Law, and Society for 2022