The Institute for Diversity Science is pleased to announce the first cohort of its Junior Visiting Scholar program. This year’s group, made up of three postdoctoral scholars, will work with IDS affiliates and be in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the 2025-2026 academic year. Read about the scholars below:
Ananya Ganesh recently earned her PhD from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Ganesh’s research focuses on building language technology to support classroom learning, with the aim of supporting all stakeholders in the learning process including teachers, students, and qualitative researchers. Her dissertation work investigates how the structure and content of classroom dialog can be understood using natural language processing (NLP) models. She will work with IDS affiliate Shamya Karumbaiah on a project that will investigate the reliability of NLP models in diverse classrooms, particularly in supporting collaborative learning amongst students conversing in a variety of languages and dialects. In particular, they will explore how high quality multilingual datasets can be used to better measure collaborative problem solving ability.
Srishti Goel recently earned her PhD from Yale University where she worked on understanding how humans infer others’ emotions using computational modeling and behavioral tasks. During her residence at the Institute for Diversity Science, she will work with affiliate Paula Niedenthal on a project about how people from racially or economically marginalized communities understand Emotion AI, a tool that tracks people’s facial muscle movements to detect emotions. They will additionally examine how awareness of biases within Emotion AI shift people’s perceptions of the tool. Findings from the research will provide critical insights into the limitations and risks of Emotion AI and will underscore the importance of ethical and inclusive practices in its development and application.
Bonnie Siegler is a sociologist who recently earned her PhD from Columbia University. Siegler’s research focuses on racial equity within organizations, with a focus on K-12 schools. During her residence at the Institute for Diversity Science, Siegler will work with affiliate Eric Grodsky on a research project that aims to better understand the impact and experiences of DEI leaders in public school districts in Wisconsin. While hiring a DEI leader has been shown to be effective in corporate settings, we know much less about how DEI leaders can impact academic and social outcomes in K-12 schools. Siegler’s research will use Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction data to examine whether the hiring of a DEI leader within a school district has measurable impacts and will supplement this analysis with qualitative interviews to learn more about the experiences of DEI leaders within Wisconsin school districts.