Emma Pierson
@emmapierson.bsky.social
Assistant professor of CS at UC Berkeley, core faculty in Computational Precision Health. Developing ML methods to study health and inequality. "On the whole, though, I take the side of amazement."
https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~emmapierson/
https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~emmapierson/
Reposted by Emma Pierson
New #NeurIPS2025 paper: how should we evaluate machine learning models without a large, labeled dataset? We introduce Semi-Supervised Model Evaluation (SSME), which uses labeled and unlabeled data to estimate performance! We find SSME is far more accurate than standard methods.
October 17, 2025 at 4:29 PM
New #NeurIPS2025 paper: how should we evaluate machine learning models without a large, labeled dataset? We introduce Semi-Supervised Model Evaluation (SSME), which uses labeled and unlabeled data to estimate performance! We find SSME is far more accurate than standard methods.
Reposted by Emma Pierson
selfishly i wish we could keep divya in our lab forever but i guess it would be a disservice to the rest of the world 😅 she’s been such a wonderful mentor to me—i’ve learned a lot from how thoughtful, creative, and knowledgeable she is about everything. she’s also super funny and amazing at baking 🤭
I am on the job market this year! My research advances methods for reliable machine learning from real-world data, with a focus on healthcare. Happy to chat if this is of interest to you or your department/team.
October 14, 2025 at 5:14 PM
selfishly i wish we could keep divya in our lab forever but i guess it would be a disservice to the rest of the world 😅 she’s been such a wonderful mentor to me—i’ve learned a lot from how thoughtful, creative, and knowledgeable she is about everything. she’s also super funny and amazing at baking 🤭
Meeting Divya 5 years ago was one of the biggest strokes of luck in my faculty career - she is a brilliant scientist who has been foundational to so many of our lab's projects, and any institution would be lucky to hire her.
I am on the job market this year! My research advances methods for reliable machine learning from real-world data, with a focus on healthcare. Happy to chat if this is of interest to you or your department/team.
October 14, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Meeting Divya 5 years ago was one of the biggest strokes of luck in my faculty career - she is a brilliant scientist who has been foundational to so many of our lab's projects, and any institution would be lucky to hire her.
🚨 New postdoc position in our lab at Berkeley EECS! 🚨
(please reshare)
We seek applicants with experience in language modeling who are excited about high-impact applications in the health and social sciences!
More info in thread
1/3
(please reshare)
We seek applicants with experience in language modeling who are excited about high-impact applications in the health and social sciences!
More info in thread
1/3
August 22, 2025 at 2:11 PM
🚨 New postdoc position in our lab at Berkeley EECS! 🚨
(please reshare)
We seek applicants with experience in language modeling who are excited about high-impact applications in the health and social sciences!
More info in thread
1/3
(please reshare)
We seek applicants with experience in language modeling who are excited about high-impact applications in the health and social sciences!
More info in thread
1/3
Reposted by Emma Pierson
📢New POSITION PAPER: Use Sparse Autoencoders to Discover Unknown Concepts, Not to Act on Known Concepts
Despite recent results, SAEs aren't dead! They can still be useful to mech interp, and also much more broadly: across FAccT, computational social science, and ML4H. 🧵
Despite recent results, SAEs aren't dead! They can still be useful to mech interp, and also much more broadly: across FAccT, computational social science, and ML4H. 🧵
August 5, 2025 at 4:33 PM
📢New POSITION PAPER: Use Sparse Autoencoders to Discover Unknown Concepts, Not to Act on Known Concepts
Despite recent results, SAEs aren't dead! They can still be useful to mech interp, and also much more broadly: across FAccT, computational social science, and ML4H. 🧵
Despite recent results, SAEs aren't dead! They can still be useful to mech interp, and also much more broadly: across FAccT, computational social science, and ML4H. 🧵
SF fog coming up to swallow us in time lapse.
July 7, 2025 at 3:19 AM
SF fog coming up to swallow us in time lapse.
Honored to win a #CHIL2025 best paper award for our work modeling inequality in disease progression, led by @ericachiang.bsky.social!
To the NIH: health inequality remains a vital topic to support the health of all Americans. As we prove, failing to account for it biases estimates for everyone.
To the NIH: health inequality remains a vital topic to support the health of all Americans. As we prove, failing to account for it biases estimates for everyone.
I can’t believe I’m saying this: our work received a Best Paper Award at #CHIL2025!! So so excited and grateful 🥰 Looking forward to day 2 of the conference with these awesome people :)
June 27, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Honored to win a #CHIL2025 best paper award for our work modeling inequality in disease progression, led by @ericachiang.bsky.social!
To the NIH: health inequality remains a vital topic to support the health of all Americans. As we prove, failing to account for it biases estimates for everyone.
To the NIH: health inequality remains a vital topic to support the health of all Americans. As we prove, failing to account for it biases estimates for everyone.
Reposted by Emma Pierson
For folks at @facct.bsky.social, our very own @cornellbowers.bsky.social student @emmharv.bsky.social will present the Best-Paper-Award-winning work she led on Wednesday at 10:45 AM in the "Audit and Evaluation Approaches" session!
In the meantime, 🧵 below and 🔗 here: arxiv.org/abs/2506.04419 !
In the meantime, 🧵 below and 🔗 here: arxiv.org/abs/2506.04419 !
June 23, 2025 at 2:49 PM
For folks at @facct.bsky.social, our very own @cornellbowers.bsky.social student @emmharv.bsky.social will present the Best-Paper-Award-winning work she led on Wednesday at 10:45 AM in the "Audit and Evaluation Approaches" session!
In the meantime, 🧵 below and 🔗 here: arxiv.org/abs/2506.04419 !
In the meantime, 🧵 below and 🔗 here: arxiv.org/abs/2506.04419 !
Reposted by Emma Pierson
assassinations, handcuffing a senator at press conference, marines detaining a civilian, and a military parade for the president’s birthday. rough week for democracy.
Governor Waltz has now confirmed that Hortman and her husband were killed in the attack.
June 14, 2025 at 3:14 PM
assassinations, handcuffing a senator at press conference, marines detaining a civilian, and a military parade for the president’s birthday. rough week for democracy.
Reposted by Emma Pierson
and... here is the actual GIF 🙈
June 14, 2025 at 5:04 PM
and... here is the actual GIF 🙈
The first paper of @ericachiang.bsky.social's PhD, just accepted at #CHIL2025, proposes a model of disease progression which estimates and accounts for 3 types of health disparities to more accurately measure disease severity. See her full thread below!
I’m really excited to share the first paper of my PhD, “Learning Disease Progression Models That Capture Health Disparities” (accepted at #CHIL2025)! ✨ 1/
📄: arxiv.org/abs/2412.16406
📄: arxiv.org/abs/2412.16406
May 1, 2025 at 3:53 PM
The first paper of @ericachiang.bsky.social's PhD, just accepted at #CHIL2025, proposes a model of disease progression which estimates and accounts for 3 types of health disparities to more accurately measure disease severity. See her full thread below!
The US government recently flagged my scientific grant in its "woke DEI database". Many people have asked me what I will do.
My answer today in Nature.
We will not be cowed. We will keep using AI to build a fairer, healthier world.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
My answer today in Nature.
We will not be cowed. We will keep using AI to build a fairer, healthier world.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
My ‘woke DEI’ grant has been flagged for scrutiny. Where do I go from here?
My work in making artificial intelligence fair has been noticed by US officials intent on ending ‘class warfare propaganda’.
www.nature.com
April 25, 2025 at 5:19 PM
The US government recently flagged my scientific grant in its "woke DEI database". Many people have asked me what I will do.
My answer today in Nature.
We will not be cowed. We will keep using AI to build a fairer, healthier world.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
My answer today in Nature.
We will not be cowed. We will keep using AI to build a fairer, healthier world.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A pleasure to join the Tech Policy Press podcast with @natematias.bsky.social, @geomblog.bsky.social, and @justinhendrix.bsky.social to defend the consensus that AI bias is an important concern.
Last month, a group of 200+ researchers signed a letter “Affirming the Scientific Consensus on Bias and Discrimination in AI.” It comes at a time when the Trump admin is rolling back AI policies and threatening research. Justin Hendrix spoke to three of the letter's signatories.
Researchers Defend the Scientific Consensus on Bias and Discrimination in AI | TechPolicy.Press
A podcast discussion with scholars J. Nathan Matias, Emma Pierson, and Suresh Venkatasubramanian.
www.techpolicy.press
April 24, 2025 at 4:20 PM
A pleasure to join the Tech Policy Press podcast with @natematias.bsky.social, @geomblog.bsky.social, and @justinhendrix.bsky.social to defend the consensus that AI bias is an important concern.
Lab had dogathon! Seminal dog discoveries ensued.
Our lab had a #dogathon 🐕 yesterday where we analyzed NYC Open Data on dog licenses. We learned a lot of dog facts, which I’ll share in this thread 🧵
1) Geospatial trends: Cavalier King Charles Spaniels are common in Manhattan; the opposite is true for Yorkshire Terriers.
1) Geospatial trends: Cavalier King Charles Spaniels are common in Manhattan; the opposite is true for Yorkshire Terriers.
April 2, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Lab had dogathon! Seminal dog discoveries ensued.
Migration data is critical in the health, environmental, and social sciences.
We're releasing a new dataset, MIGRATE: annual flows between 47 billion pairs of US Census areas. MIGRATE is:
- 4600x more granular than existing public data
- highly correlated with external ground-truth data
1/2
We're releasing a new dataset, MIGRATE: annual flows between 47 billion pairs of US Census areas. MIGRATE is:
- 4600x more granular than existing public data
- highly correlated with external ground-truth data
1/2
March 28, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Migration data is critical in the health, environmental, and social sciences.
We're releasing a new dataset, MIGRATE: annual flows between 47 billion pairs of US Census areas. MIGRATE is:
- 4600x more granular than existing public data
- highly correlated with external ground-truth data
1/2
We're releasing a new dataset, MIGRATE: annual flows between 47 billion pairs of US Census areas. MIGRATE is:
- 4600x more granular than existing public data
- highly correlated with external ground-truth data
1/2
Reposted by Emma Pierson
💡New preprint & Python package: We use sparse autoencoders to generate hypotheses from large text datasets.
Our method, HypotheSAEs, produces interpretable text features that predict a target variable, e.g. features in news headlines that predict engagement. 🧵1/
Our method, HypotheSAEs, produces interpretable text features that predict a target variable, e.g. features in news headlines that predict engagement. 🧵1/
March 18, 2025 at 3:17 PM
💡New preprint & Python package: We use sparse autoencoders to generate hypotheses from large text datasets.
Our method, HypotheSAEs, produces interpretable text features that predict a target variable, e.g. features in news headlines that predict engagement. 🧵1/
Our method, HypotheSAEs, produces interpretable text features that predict a target variable, e.g. features in news headlines that predict engagement. 🧵1/
We have a new method, HypotheSAEs, for identifying *interpretable text features that predict a target variable* (aka hypothesis generation).
What features of a headline predict engagement?
What features of a clinical note predict whether a patient will develop cancer?
1/
What features of a headline predict engagement?
What features of a clinical note predict whether a patient will develop cancer?
1/
March 18, 2025 at 6:26 PM
We have a new method, HypotheSAEs, for identifying *interpretable text features that predict a target variable* (aka hypothesis generation).
What features of a headline predict engagement?
What features of a clinical note predict whether a patient will develop cancer?
1/
What features of a headline predict engagement?
What features of a clinical note predict whether a patient will develop cancer?
1/
Reposted by Emma Pierson
Humbled and honored to receive this award -- thank you, @sloanfoundation.bsky.social, for supporting STEM research!
🎉Congrats to the 126 early-career scientists who have been awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship this year! These exceptional scholars are drawn from 51 institutions across the US and Canada, and represent the next generation of groundbreaking researchers. sloan.org/fellowships/...
February 18, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Humbled and honored to receive this award -- thank you, @sloanfoundation.bsky.social, for supporting STEM research!
Reposted by Emma Pierson
Applications are open for the Machine Learning in Economics Summer Institute (MLESI) 2025 are open!
If you're a graduate student, come learn about ML/AI and its uses throughout economics.
Apply by March 28. The application and more info can be found here: www.chicagobooth.edu/research/cen...
If you're a graduate student, come learn about ML/AI and its uses throughout economics.
Apply by March 28. The application and more info can be found here: www.chicagobooth.edu/research/cen...
Machine Learning in Economics Summer Institute 2025 (MLESI25)
<span id="docs-internal-guid-53f97f20-7fff-b55c-c89c-4f85d663a48c" style="color: #39393a;"><span style="color: #000000;">MLESI<span id="docs-internal-guid-394e21c4-7fff-1437-16ff-fdbb1ce1d34c" style="...
www.chicagobooth.edu
January 26, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Applications are open for the Machine Learning in Economics Summer Institute (MLESI) 2025 are open!
If you're a graduate student, come learn about ML/AI and its uses throughout economics.
Apply by March 28. The application and more info can be found here: www.chicagobooth.edu/research/cen...
If you're a graduate student, come learn about ML/AI and its uses throughout economics.
Apply by March 28. The application and more info can be found here: www.chicagobooth.edu/research/cen...
New piece in Nature: @leahpierson.bsky.social and I argue that philanthropic funders should shield science from cuts the Trump administration may make to climate science, infectious disease, etc.
Free access link: rdcu.be/d6aul
Longer version on my website: shorturl.at/muwts
Free access link: rdcu.be/d6aul
Longer version on my website: shorturl.at/muwts
January 14, 2025 at 6:49 PM
New piece in Nature: @leahpierson.bsky.social and I argue that philanthropic funders should shield science from cuts the Trump administration may make to climate science, infectious disease, etc.
Free access link: rdcu.be/d6aul
Longer version on my website: shorturl.at/muwts
Free access link: rdcu.be/d6aul
Longer version on my website: shorturl.at/muwts
Our article on using LLMs to promote health equity is out in New England Journal of Medicine AI!
85% of equity-related LLM papers focus on *harms*.
But also vital are the equity-related *opportunities* LLMs create: detecting bias, extracting structured data, and improving access to health info.
85% of equity-related LLM papers focus on *harms*.
But also vital are the equity-related *opportunities* LLMs create: detecting bias, extracting structured data, and improving access to health info.
January 13, 2025 at 5:51 PM
Our article on using LLMs to promote health equity is out in New England Journal of Medicine AI!
85% of equity-related LLM papers focus on *harms*.
But also vital are the equity-related *opportunities* LLMs create: detecting bias, extracting structured data, and improving access to health info.
85% of equity-related LLM papers focus on *harms*.
But also vital are the equity-related *opportunities* LLMs create: detecting bias, extracting structured data, and improving access to health info.
Oregon stars. Happy holidays to all!
December 25, 2024 at 4:09 AM
Oregon stars. Happy holidays to all!
Some holiday reading if you're looking for an accessible, up-to-date overview of the fast-moving generative AI in medicine literature - our new paper, to appear in Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science!
We have a new review on generative AI in medicine, to appear in the Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science! We cover over 250 papers in the recent literature to provide an updated overview of use cases and challenges for generative AI in medicine.
December 18, 2024 at 5:14 PM
Some holiday reading if you're looking for an accessible, up-to-date overview of the fast-moving generative AI in medicine literature - our new paper, to appear in Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science!
Reposted by Emma Pierson
I'm in Vancouver and will be giving a spotlight talk at #ML4H
tomorrow, Dec. 15, at 4:30pm on some ongoing work on modeling multi-stage selection problems in clinical settings. Work done with (high school senior!) Sophia Lin, Bonnie Berger, and @emmapierson.bsky.social. I hope to see you there!
tomorrow, Dec. 15, at 4:30pm on some ongoing work on modeling multi-stage selection problems in clinical settings. Work done with (high school senior!) Sophia Lin, Bonnie Berger, and @emmapierson.bsky.social. I hope to see you there!
December 15, 2024 at 2:57 AM
I'm in Vancouver and will be giving a spotlight talk at #ML4H
tomorrow, Dec. 15, at 4:30pm on some ongoing work on modeling multi-stage selection problems in clinical settings. Work done with (high school senior!) Sophia Lin, Bonnie Berger, and @emmapierson.bsky.social. I hope to see you there!
tomorrow, Dec. 15, at 4:30pm on some ongoing work on modeling multi-stage selection problems in clinical settings. Work done with (high school senior!) Sophia Lin, Bonnie Berger, and @emmapierson.bsky.social. I hope to see you there!
Reposted by Emma Pierson
31% of US adults use generative AI for healthcare 🤯But most AI systems answer questions assertively—even when they don’t have the necessary context. Introducing #MediQ a framework that enables LLMs to recognize uncertainty🤔and ask the right questions❓when info is missing: 🧵
December 6, 2024 at 10:51 PM
31% of US adults use generative AI for healthcare 🤯But most AI systems answer questions assertively—even when they don’t have the necessary context. Introducing #MediQ a framework that enables LLMs to recognize uncertainty🤔and ask the right questions❓when info is missing: 🧵