Grace Jennings is a researcher interested in conducting innovative computational analysis with an evolving understanding of the social impact of algorithmic systems. She is broadly focused in the fields of Natural Language Processing, Human-Computer Interaction, and Computational Social Sciences with a particular interest in how humans understand and create alongside AI systems. She aims to ultimately contribute to building more equitable and aligned systems that support human creativity and critical thinking. Currently, Grace is a first-year PhD Student at the UC Berkeley School of Information.

Formerly, Grace was a researcher and data engineer with the Computational Social Science Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, under Professor Duncan Watts. She maintained and expanded the large-scale data infrastructure of the Penn Media Accountability Project, which is synthesized on a public-facing dashboard. She also continues to contribute to research on identifying bias and narratives in mainstream media and science communication.

She holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering from Vanderbilt University with disciplines in Computer Systems and Networks, and Intelligent Systems and Robotics. There, she researched human interaction with autonomous systems in collaboration with researchers at MIT CSAIL and TU Munich. She was previously a software engineer at Microsoft on their graphics compiler team, where she contributed to the DirectX Shader Compiler and LLVM, two large open-source projects.

Grace is also an avid baker and outdoor enthusiast. When she's offline, she can probably be found in a professional kitchen or her home kitchen, nurturing a long-time love of food, the community it brings, the creativity it allows, and the history it holds. And when she's not in Berkeley, she can probably be found on a bike or in a tent somewhere, probably further from home than she planned.