URCAD 2025
Dr. Randi Williams ’16 B.S., Computer Engineering
Program Manager at the Algorithmic Justice League
M.S., ’18, MIT
Ph.D., ’24, MIT
UC 312
Noon – 1 p.m.
April 16,2025
Dr. Randi Williams is an educator, tinkerer, and passionate agent of change harnessing technology to empower communities. Her work addresses key issues in AI education, inclusivity, and human-computer interaction. She currently is the Program Manager at the Algorithmic Justice League while preparing to join the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University Human-Computer Interaction Institute.
Dr. Williams helps equip researchers, policymakers, and grassroots changemakers to responsibly use AI for meaningful social impact. She has spearheaded initiatives like the MIT RAISE AI Playground and Day of AI, which have made AI instruction available to thousands of educators worldwide. Her groundbreaking work on social robot learning companions (PopBots) and grade school AI + ethics curricula, (How to Train Your Robot) have garnered recognition and accolades from leading organizations such as Microsoft Research, LEGO, and the National Science Foundation and have been featured in prominent media outlets, including The Atlantic, Wired, and MIT Technology Review.
Dr. Williams earned her Ph.D. (’24) and Masters (’18) from MIT in the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab. She earned her Bachelor’s (’16) in Computer Engineering as a Meyerhoff Scholar, Honors College student, and CWIT affiliate at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where she worked with Dr. Nilanjan Banerjee in the Mobile, Pervasive, and Sensor Systems Laboratory on the Inviz project and Flex Gloves projects and founded HackUMBC. She is a founding director of the Boston Chapter of Black in Robotics. Previously, Dr. Williams worked at Microsoft Research, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, and MIT Lincoln Lab.