McCosh Hall
50

Sponsored by the Alumni Association of Princeton University

Moderator

Elad Hazan *06
Professor of Computer Science, Princeton University

Panelists

Sara Asher ’94
Head of Product, Faros AI

Kevin McKee ’14
Staff Research Scientist, Google DeepMind

Devina Singh ’19
Senior Product Manager, TikTok Generative AI

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries *05
Reporter, The New York Times

Moderator

Elad Hazan *06
Professor of Computer Science, Princeton University

Elad Hazan’s research focuses on the design and analysis of algorithms for basic problems in machine learning and optimization. Among his contributions are the co-invention of the AdaGrad algorithm for deep learning, the first sublinear-time algorithms for convex optimization and online non-stochastic control theory. He is the recipient of the Bell Labs Prize, the IBM Goldberg best paper award twice, a European Research Council grant, a Marie Curie fellowship and the Google Research Award twice. He served on the steering committee of the Association for Computational Learning and was program chair for its Conference on Learning Theory in 2015. He is the co-founder and director of Google AI Princeton.

Panelists

Sara Asher ’94
Head of Product, Faros AI

Sara Asher ’94 has been building data analytics applications for over 15 years. She is currently head of product for Faros AI, where she is building a platform that provides software companies analytics and AI-generated insights across all aspects of their entire software development process. Prior to Faros AI, Asher was a senior director of product management at Salesforce, where she built out AI capabilities within the Einstein machine learning platform and shipped products that allowed users to create custom AI predictions in Salesforce. Asher holds an A.B. in mathematics from Princeton and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Northwestern University.

Kevin McKee ’14
Staff Research Scientist, Google DeepMind

Kevin McKee conducts research spanning machine learning, social psychology and human-agent interaction. His projects focus in particular on the design of inclusive and cooperative AI systems, touching on topics as diverse as using machine learning to promote group cooperation, applying Rawls’ concept of the veil of ignorance to align AI systems with human values, and exploring the ethical and epistemological risks of replacing human participants with AI surrogates. Currently, McKee is working to develop sociotechnical methods for evaluating large language models, in partnership with external experts and community stakeholders. McKee also frequently collaborates on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, including co-founding and leading Google DeepMind’s queer employee group.

Devina Singh ’19
Senior Product Manager, TikTok Generative AI

Devina Singh began her career as a software engineer at Microsoft working on their Azure Machine Learning (ML) product. Her projects included building an ML experimentation platform and tools for users to efficiently train and run inference on ML models in the cloud. She then transitioned to Amazon as a senior product manager on their Ads and Machine Learning team, where she focused on developing recommendation systems. Singh is soon joining TikTok’s Generative AI team as a senior product manager, where she will be working on video generation models and multimodal AI. She recently graduated with her MBA and M.S. in engineering from Harvard University.

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries *05
Reporter, The New York Times

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries is a reporter on the investigative team at The New York Times, where she specializes in using novel datasets to shed light on complex subjects. Her work often explores the far-reaching effects of the technology industry on society and has included examinations of digital surveillance, social media misinformation and the “influencer” economy. In 2022, she was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for coverage of systemic failures in American policing that lead to avoidable deaths; she investigated scientific experts who defend police officers after deaths in custody. A graduate of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, she has also worked at The Wall Street Journal and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.