- Personal Robots
Randi Williams is a graduate research assistant in the Personal Robots group where she studies human-robot interaction and preK-12 education, with a focus on students from diverse backgrounds. She is affiliated with MIT's RAISE initiative and a founding director of the Boston chapter of Black in Robotics. She has a Master of Science in Media Arts in Sciences from MIT in 2018 and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from UMBC in 2016.
Randi strives to prepare the next generation of ethical engineers to use AI to solve pressing issues in their communities. Her projects on social robot learning companions (PopBots) and grade school AI + ethics curricula, (How to Train Your Robot) have received coverage from outlets such as The Atlantic, Wired, and the MIT Tech Review. She has received numerous awards, including the Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship, Cambridge Curious Scientist of the Year Award, LEGO Papert Fellowship, and NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
Key skills: AI literacy, Responsible AI, human-computer interaction studies, curriculum design, full-stack web development, hardware development, inclusive education