Featured Speakers

Priyanka Kulkarni

Keynote Speaker 

Talk Title: 

Abstract: 

​

Bio:  Priyanka Kulkarni is the Founder and CEO of Casium, a startup transforming U.S. immigration for global tech talent. A former Principal Science Manager at Microsoft's Azure AI, she spent a decade leading breakthrough initiatives in natural language processing and machine learning. Priyanka holds dual Master's degrees in Computer Science and Applied Computational Mathematics from the University of Washington and Johns Hopkins University. Currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at AI2 Incubator, she combines her deep technical expertise in AI with a mission to empower the world's brightest minds to innovate in the U.S. Her work has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, and GeekWire, and she holds multiple patents in AI and machine learning. Through Casium, she's working to create transparent pathways for exceptional global talent to build and create in America.

Christine Ortiz

Moderator for Panel 1: Democratic Processes and Public Policy

Bio: Dr. Christine Ortiz is a professor, engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, former dean, corporate board director, and foundation trustee. As the Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Ortiz is a nationally and internationally recognized leader with over 25 years of experience in science, engineering, research and development, and technology innovation. Dr. Ortiz has expertise in biotechnology and biomaterials, orthopedic materials and medical technologies, natural, biological, bio-mimetic, and bio-inspired systems, advanced and additive manufacturing, nanomechanics and nanotechnology, polymer physics, computational modeling of materials, multiscale mechanics, high resolution imaging and microscopy, and sustainable approaches to materials design. Dr. Ortiz has given invited talks in 25 countries and has over 210 scholarly publications (including features on the covers of the journals Science, Nature Materials, and The Journal of Structural Biology). She has supervised the research projects of more than 300 students, postdocs, and researchers from more than 60 different majors and disciplines, and received more than 30 national and international honors including the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering which was awarded to her at the White House by U.S. President George W. Bush. Dr. Ortiz has led large cross-disciplinary teams and research grants which have included engineers, scientists, physicians, architects, historians, linguists, civic designers, and urban planners. Dr. Ortiz has served on over 50 scientific evaluation boards and expert panels collectively overseeing in excess of $200M in research and development funds. Dr. Ortiz is an entrepreneur and through the founding of a nonprofit higher education and research institution Station1 Laboratory Inc. and innovation programs at MIT, she has partnered with over 70 technology-focused start-up companies on research and development projects. Dr. Ortiz currently serves on the board of directors of two public companies, Mueller Water Products (NYSE: MWA: a leading manufacturer and marketer of products and software services used in the transmission, distribution, and measurement of water) and Enovis (NYSE: ENOV: a medical technology company developing clinically differentiated solutions that generate measurably better patient outcomes and transform workflows).

Mona Birjandi

Panel 1: Democratic Processes and Public Policy

Bio: Dr. Mona Birjandi is an economist specializing in the application of microeconomic theory and econometric methods to complex litigation matters involving labor and employment. As the head of Outten & Golden’s Economics and Data Analytics team, she initiated and leads the firm’s efforts in leveraging economic analysis, statistical modeling, AI, machine learning and other tools to support the firm’s employment and digital discrimination cases and investigations. In particular, her work focuses on the production and analysis of data throughout the negotiation, e-discovery, litigation, and mediation process, including for impact and damage calculations, expert testimony, and the development of data-driven legal arguments. She also serves as Chair of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) Litigation Economics Group, where she led the inaugural Econ + Law Summit—the first event of its kind convening economists and legal practitioners around the evolving role of data, analytics, and expert evidence in modern litigation. Prior to joining the Outten & Golden, Dr. Birjandi combined extensive experience in economic consulting and corporate analytics. As a senior economist in consulting, Dr. Birjandi conducted economic and statistical analyses across a wide range of labor and employment issues and worked on cases throughout all phases of pretrial and trial practice. Dr. Birjandi later served as the Principal Economist at Petco Health and Wellness. While there, she collaborated with an interdisciplinary team of data scientists and executives on data projects aimed at optimizing the company’s pricing and business strategies.

Dr. Birjandi earned both a Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from Yale University, and an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts University.

Katherine Fick

Panel 1: Democratic Processes and Public Policy

Bio: As IBM's Associate General Counsel for Privacy and AI, Katherine leads the global team of lawyers who translate emerging privacy and AI regulations into actionable guidance. This involves practical collaboration with business functions ranging from R&D, consulting, and software, as well as with HR and other corporate functions. Katherine previously led the team of lawyers supporting IBM's cybersecurity business unit, and has helped lead a number of incident responses from a legal standpoint. She also deploys to assist with the aftermath of natural and political disasters through ShelterBox, a global NGO, traveling to Moldova, Malawi, and throughout Central and South America to help communities recover.

Bailey Flanagan

Panel 1: Democratic Processes and Public Policy

Bio: Bailey Flanigan is an assistant professor at MIT in Political Science and EECS (LIDS). Prior to joining MIT, she did her PhD in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University ('24) and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard ('25). Her research focuses on designing, evaluating, and improving methods for facilitating direct public engagement in democratic decision-making. Applications of her work include sortition, deliberative democracy, participatory budgeting, and voting in various forms. She is also generally interested in how digital democratic methods can be integrated into political pipelines in ways that uphold democratic legitimacy while making participation more accessible. Her work mainly uses methods from algorithms, game theory and mechanism design, machine learning, and statistics.

Abigail Bowering

Moderator for Panel 2:  Extreme Weather and Pollution: Impact and Equity

Bio:

Arlene Fiore

Panel 2: Extreme Weather and Pollution: Impact and Equity

Bio: Prof. Fiore studies the two-way interactions between air pollutants and the climate system, at scales ranging from urban to global, and from daily to decades-long. Her group applies chemistry-transport and chemistry-climate models that generate hundreds of terabytes of data, and analyzes them alongside observations from ground, airborne and satellite platforms. She has authored/co-authored numerous reports on air quality and climate for policymakers and government agencies. Fiore has been recognized by the AGU with the James R. Holton Junior Scientist Award and the James B. Macelwane Medal. After earning an AB in environmental geoscience and a PhD in Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University, Fiore served as a research scientist in the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and on the faculty at Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. An EAPS faculty member since 2021, she was appointed as its Associate Department Head in 2025.

Sucharita Gopal

Panel 2: Extreme Weather and Pollution: Impact and Equity

Bio: 

Desirée Plata

Panel 2: Extreme Weather and Pollution: Impact and Equity

Bio: Desirée Plata’s research seeks to maximize technology’s benefit to society while minimizing environmental impacts in industrially important practices through the use of geochemical tools and chemical mechanistic insights. Plata earned her doctoral degree in Chemical Oceanography and Environmental Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Joint Program in Oceanography (2009) and her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Union College in Schenectady, NY (2003). Plata is an NSF CAREER Awardee (2016), an Odebrecht-Braskem Sustainable Innovation Awardee (2015), a two-time National Academy of Engineers Frontiers of Engineering Fellow (2012, 2020), a two-time National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow (2011, 2013), a Caltech Resnick Sustainability Fellow (2017), and winner of MIT’s Junior Bose Teaching Award (2019), Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award (2021), and Perkins Graduate Advising Award (2021), and Bose Innovation Fellow (2025). Having previously served as John J. Lee Assistant Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale University and Associate Director for Research at the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale, Plata is now Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, Director of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, Director of the Parsons Laboratory for Environmental Science, and co-director of the MIT Superfund Research Program. Plata directs MIT’s Methane Network, serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of Spark Climate, and served on the National Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine’s Atmospheric Methane Removal study (recused). Plata is co-founder of Nth Cycle (nthcycle.com), co-founder and President of Sustainable Chemical Resource Advisors LLC, and co-founder and President of Moxair Inc.