Data science tools create new opportunities to assist policy-makers. For example, enabling healthy and sustainable diets is key to addressing preventable diseases and climate change. How can data science methods help policy-makers in developing interventions that address these and other societal challenges?

I develop causal inference tools for explaining decision-making and LLM methods for implementing novel interventions. I will describe how social factors affect decision-making in campus communities (PNAS Nexus ’24) and talk about work that mined these insights to assist chefs and food scientists by revising menus and products. I apply the same causal inference and LLM tools to other societal issues affecting localized communities. For instance, I will describe how we can help neighbors get along online by developing novel interventions on social media (PNAS ’24). These new data science methods advance the foundations for technology to support policy-making and interventions.

These studies have had a real impact, affecting thousands of people within a university campus and hundreds of thousands of online users, in partnerships with real-world organizations and companies. My work expands how data science tools can positively affect society across a spectrum of everyday activities, improving communication, health, and sustainability.

Speaker bio: Kristina Gligorić is a Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University’s Computer Science Department. Previously, she obtained her Ph.D. in Computer Science at EPFL. Her work has been published in top computer science conferences focused on computational social science and in broad audience journals (PNAS, Nature Medicine, and Nature Communications). She is a Swiss National Science Foundation Fellow, Rising Star in Data Science, EECS Rising Star, and Rising Star in GenAI. She received awards for her work, including the EPFL Thesis Distinction and CSCW 2021 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award. Her work has been featured in high-profile outlets including Scientific American and Nature’s Editors’ Highlights.