Welcome

Belén Saldías – belen [at] mit [dot] edu

I'm a last year Ph.D. Candidate at the MIT's Center for Constructive Communication.

My research explores how we can design online spaces that promote healthier, more constructive interactions. By leveraging advancements in AI, including large language models (LLMs), and by intentionally designing user-centric tools and decentralized online communities, I aim to shift decision-making power from platform designers to the communities themselves.

My dissertation focuses on leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to reimagine opportunities for purposeful online spaces, with a specific eye on speech norms. I introduce Odessa – a DEcentralized Social Systems App!

In the job market.

Experience

2018 - present Ph.D. Candidate - CCC - MIT.
2021 Summer - Research Intern - Google Translate Montreal.
2017 - 2018 Adjunct Professor - P. Catholic University of Chile (PUC).
2016 - 2018 Lead Data Scientist - Falabella.com.
2016 - 2017 Research Assistant - IACS, Harvard University.
2016 - 2017 M.Sc. Machine Learning - PUC.
2012 - 2017 B.S. Engineering and CS - PUC.

Conferences & Events

2024 July - Poster @ IC2S2. Philadelphia, USA.
2023 Sept - Workshop lecturer @ Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria.
2023 April - Speaker @ TEDx Bentley U. Does AI hold our same values?
2023 Jan - Keynote Talk & Lecture @ MIT–Chile Research Workshop.
2022 May - Full paper (video) @ HumEval, ACL 2022, Dublin, Ireland.
2021 Oct - Attendee, CSCW MOSafely
2020 Nov - Extended abstract (paper) @ CODI 2020, EMNLP.
2020 Aug - Panelist, Mitigating Bias in Analytics @ WIA and Tableau.
2020 July - Full paper accepted (video) @ NUSE ACL.
2020 July - Leader WiML breakout session @ ICML.
2020 July - Poster and video presentation @ WiML at ICML.
2019 Dec - Poster @ WiML at NeurIPS, Vancouver, Canada
2019 Nov - Paper @ ACM CSCW, Austin, Texas, USA
2019 Sept - Full paper @ ACII, Cambridge, United Kingdom
2019 May - Full paper oral presentation @ SIAM SDM, Calgary, Canada
2018 - Panelist @ WIDS, Santiago, Chile
2017 - Speaker, Graduation Speech @ DCC UC, Santiago, Chile

News and service

2023 - General Chair @ MIT–Chile Research Workshops
2023 - Program Committee FAcct2023
2022 - Board @ Women in Machine Learning (WiML)
2022 - Volunteer @ MIT Path of Professorship
2022 - Program Committee @ Data-driven Humanitarian Mapping, KDD
2022 Winter - Teaching Workshop Facilitator at MIT TLL
2020 - Logistics Co-Chair @ WiML at NeurIPS (Gather architecture & Funding Program)
2020-21 - Reviewer for CHI21, CSCW21
2020 Fall - TA for Understanding Public Thought, MIT & UW-Madison
2020 - Super-volunteer @ WiML at ICML
2020 - Reviewer for the ICML Deploy and Monitor ML workshop
2020-21 - Hall Council Chair, MIT Sidney Pacific Grad Community
2019 - Reviewer for the 14th NeurIPS WiML workshop
2019 Fall - Grad TA for machine learning class at EECS, MIT

Grants

2023 - I raised $30K from multiple academic sponsors to host more than 100 students and fly speakers from MIT and Harvard University to Chile. See highlights here.
2022 - Travel Grants, MIT Media Lab ($2K).
2021 - 2023 MIT Teaching Development Fellowship ($4K).
2019 - Travel Grants, MIT Media Lab ($6K) and WiML ($1K).

Awards

2023 - MIT Women of Excellence Award, MIT, USA.
2018 - Highest Teaching Quality. Data Mining core course. Engineering School. PUC, Chle.
2017 - Best Computer Science Thesis Award. PUC, Chile.
2016, 2017 - Master Degree Excellence Scholarship. PUC, Chile.
2015 - Best Teaching Assistant. Engineering School. PUC, Chile.
2012 - Honor enrollment - Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. PUC, Chile.
2012 - National Math Top Score. Government of Chile.

Main Printed Media

2024 - Featured in exhibition. Museum für Kommunikation, Berlin, Germany.
2023 - Diario Financiero, DF MAS, Chile
2022 - El Mercurio main section, Chile, 2022 (link, pdf)
2020 - El Mercurio cover and innovation section, Chile, 2020 (pdf, La Segunda
2019 - MIT Media Lab en español, La Razón, España
2019 - Emociones en Twitter, El País, España

Invited talks and lectures

2024 Dec - Guest Lecture @ CS, Columbia University, USA.
2024 Dec - CS Seminar Talk @ Barnard College, Columbia University, USA.
2024 May - Guest Lecture, LLMs and us, KAIST G-SCHOOL @ MIT, hosted by Prof. Hyeon Yeo.
2023 Oct - Guest Lecture, LLMs, responsible sentiment analysis, and content moderation in social media @ Advances in Affective Computing, MIT, hosted by Prof. Roz Picard.
2023 Oct - Guest presentation, Thesis @ Intro to MAS at MIT, research highlight.
2023 May - Lecture and Workshop, Intro to ML & LLMs, MIT GSL and MIT MISTI.
2023 Mar - Invited Research Presentation, Community-aligned Content Moderation with Rationale Generation @ Generative AI for Constructive Communication, MIT.
2022 Oct – Guest Lecture, Responsible sentiment analysis, affect manipulation and social media @ Advances in Affective Computing, MIT, hosted by Prof. Roz Picard.
2022 Aug - Talk, ML in Industry @ Agrosuper, Chile.
2022 Jun - Lecture and Workshop, Intro to ML & ML in Industry, MIT GSL and MIT MISTI.
2022 Apr - Guest Lecture, Expectation Maximization and Mixture of Gaussians, Data Mining @ PUC CS.
2021, 2019 Spring - Guest presentation @ Affective Computing class by Prof. Roz Picard, MIT
2020 Oct - Talk, Innovation and Entrepreneurship @ U. La Sabana, Colombia
2020 Oct - Talk @ Social Computing & Visualization Group, PUC
2020 Oct - Research @ PUC CS/DCC, PhD Seminar
2020 Aug - Talk, Data Science in Industry @ U. de Concepción, Chile
2019 - Various research presentations @ PUC Chile
2019 - AI Demos, Panasonic Corporation x 3 @ MIT Media Lab