Belén Saldías

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

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

Research: 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 Ph.D. dissertation introduces Odessa – a DEcentralized Social Systems App!

Teaching: Teaching and mentoring have been at the core of my career for over a decade. My experience includes three Adjunct Professor appointments, three grad-level Teaching Assistant (TA) appointments, and more than fifteen undergrad-level TA appointments. I am excited to lead and collaborate with faculty and students in designing curriculums in AI, NLP, HCI, and ethics in AI.

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