About Me
Coder. Dancer. Creator.

As a UX Researcher pursuing a PhD in Informatics from Pennsylvania State University, I bring a wealth of knowledge in the area of human-computer interaction and human behavioral dynamics. My extensive background in both AI and HCI research has given me a well-rounded understanding of both the technical aspects of AI and the principles of design. My active participation in various projects across different labs at Penn State, exploring subjects such as AI biases, crisis response, adaptive learning, and community evaluation, has further honed my ability to think critically and work collaboratively in order to find impactful solutions through research. My PhD is supervised by Dr. Mary Beth Rosson. I am a part of the Innovation and Collaboration Lab led by Dr. Jack M. Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson. My primary research focus is to leverage data-driven approaches rooted in educational psychology to design cutting-edge tools that improve the online learning experience.
I am currently on the job market!

Publications
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Venkit, P. N.*, Srinath, M.*, Gautam, S., Venkatraman, S., Gupta, V., Passonneau, R. J., & Wilson, S. The Sentiment Problem: A Critical Survey towards Deconstructing Sentiment Analysis. (Accepted at EMNLP 23)
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Gautam, S. What the Annotator Does Not Know, Can Harm Us. Workshop at CSCW' 23 : Understanding and Mitigating Cognitive Biases in Human-AI Collaboration.
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Gautam, S.*, Venkit, P.*, Panchanadikar, R.*, Huang, T., & Wilson, S. (2023) Unmasking Nationality Bias: A Study of Human Perception of Nationalities in AI-Generated Articles. In Proceedings of the 2023 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (pp. 554-565).
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Gautam, S., Rosson, M.B. (2023) and Akgun, M. Exploring Potential Contributions of Social Learning to Adaptive Learning Systems. CHI EA '23: Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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Venkit, P., Gautam, S., Panchanadikar, R., Huang, T., & Wilson, S. (2023) Nationality Bias in Text Generation. Proceedings of the 17th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
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Gautam, S., Akgun, M., & Mitra, P. (2022, March). Exploring the challenges of AI experts to inform AI curriculum. In Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2 (pp. 1338-1338).
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Grace, R., Gautam, S., & Tapia, A. (2022). Continuity planning in Public-Safety Answering Points during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Proceedings of the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) Asia Pacific Conference (pp. 173-180). Melbourne, Australia.
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Rodriguez, G. R., Gautam, S., & Tapia, A. (2022). Understanding Twitters behavior during the pandemic: Fake News and Fear. arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.05134.
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Gautam, S. (2022). In Alexa, We Trust. Or Do We?: An analysis of People's Perception of Privacy Policies. arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.00086.
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Gautam, S., & Rosson, M. B. (2021). Exploring Feelings of Student Community across a Geographically Distributed University. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 5(CSCW1), 1-16.
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Saurabh, S., & Gautam, S. (2019). Modelling and statistical analysis of YouTube's educational videos: A channel Owner's perspective. Computers & Education, 128, 145-158.
Honors and Awards
2023 College of IST Graduate Student Travel Grant
2023 Nittany AI Challenge 2023 Semi‑Finalist (ChronoNews)
2023 Nittany AI Challenge 2023 Semi‑Finalist (ClassCollab)
2020 Robert Graham Endowment Graduate Fellow, Pennsylvania State University
2019 Robert Graham Endowment Graduate Fellow, Pennsylvania State University
2015-2019 Undergraduate Scholar (Tuition Waiver), Shiv Nadar University
2013-2019 National Talent Search Scholar, Government of India

Leadership Roles

PRESIDENT
Graduate Student Organization College of Information Sciences and Technology
Pennsylvania State University

CO-ORGANIZER
HackData- The Data Science Hackathon
Shiv Nadar University

CHAIR
SNU ACM-W Chapter
Shiv Nadar University

News
2023
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October : Presenting my position paper at CSCW Workshop 2023! See you in Minneapolis.
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August : Presenting our work in 'Unmasking Nationality Bias' at AIES 23 in Montreal!
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July : Started on a new journey with my blog! Check it out here!
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June : I will be attending CSST 2023 in Colorado. Rockies here I come!
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June : I will be attending FAccT 2023 in Chicago as Student Volunteer.
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June : I will be joining the Penn HCI Lab at University of Pennsylvania for Summer 2023. Looking forward to working with Dr. Danaë Metaxa !
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May : Our paper got accepted at AIES 23!
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April : I will be presenting my work at CHI 2023 in Germany!
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February : Our CHI-LBW Paper got in!
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January : We got our paper accepted at EACL!
2022
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December : Our poster paper got accepted at SIGCSE Technical Symposium.
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November : I will be attending CSCW as a Student Volunteer.
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September : I am happy to share that I will be joining Dataminr as a Research Science Intern (Human AI Innovation) for Fall.
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August : Our work with 911 Centers during Covid-19 got accepted at ISCRAM Asia Pacific.
2021
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October : I will be presenting my paper on the We Are project at CSCW. I will also be a Student Volunteer at the conference.
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September : I am happy to share that I will be joining Dataminr as a Research Science Intern (Human Computer Interaction) for Fall.
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August : I successfully defended my PhD Thesis Proposal! I am now an ABD!
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April : I will be attending the 2021 CRA-WP Grad Cohort Workshop for Women .
2020
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August : I have been awarded the Robert Graham Graduate Fellowship.
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May : I passed my Qualifying Exam. I am now a PhD Candidate!
2019
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August : I have been awarded the Robert Graham Graduate Fellowship.
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May : I graduated with Honors in Computer Science with a minor in Economics from Shiv Nadar University.
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April : I will be attending Penn State starting this Fall to pursue PhD in Informatics with a focus on Human Computer Interaction.
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February : I got PhD acceptances from Penn State, Arizona State and Singapore Management University.
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January : I will be starting as a Technology Strats Intern at Goldman Sachs.

"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities"
J. K. Rowling


CV
Professional Experience
Research Intern, HAI
Sept 2022 - Dec 2022
Dataminr
Designed and executed three studies; exploratory card sorting, dairy study and focus group study
Communicated with the stakeholders the findings, aligning with strategic business objectives
Collaborated with designers, providing comprehensive needs assessment reports to inform key product development decisions
Research Intern, HCI
Sept 2021 - Dec 2021
Dataminr
Qualitative researcher in the AI Engineering team, driving critical research initiatives and delivering valuable insights
Designed, executed, and analyzed semi-structured interviews with diverse stakeholders
Designed survey, collected data and employing advanced analytical techniques to summarize results and uncover meaningful patterns
Extracted performance insights to optimize workflow
Technology Strats Intern
Jan 2019 - May 2019
Goldman Sachs
Spearheaded the development of a cutting-edge, web-based microservices-driven payment control portal to replace legacy platform.
Designed and developed an intuitive user interface for the web-based microservice, ensuring seamless functionality and an exceptional user experience.

Get in Touch
E311 Westgate Building
Pennsylvania State University
University Park
PA 16802