Recently, Nel Escher (any/all) began their position as a Bellwether Postdoctoral Scholar, working alongside School of Information Professor Deirdre Mulligan. We spoke to Escher about what drew them to Berkeley, their interests outside of their work, and their current research.
Before joining the School of Information, what were you working on? What drew you to the I School and UC Berkeley?
Before coming to Cal, I completed a J.D. & Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Michigan, focusing on what can break — and who is harmed — when law is translated into computer code. Through collaborations with civil rights lawyers, I evaluated several state’s automated benefits systems and found serious failures that prevented residents from getting access to unemployment benefits, child care, and other vital services.
The School of Information is an awesome place for this work, since it brings technical rigor together with law and policy.
What are you most looking forward to about being here?
I’m so excited to be working with Deirdre Mulligan, because the partnerships she’s building with the State of California mean that I’ll be working alongside government leaders — not just critiquing them from the outside.
Tell us about your current research. What problems are you most excited to tackle in this role?
Currently, I’m considering how government officials should evaluate products with LLM-enabled features. What methods and policies are useful in this endeavor? And when is it appropriate to delegate tasks central to government legitimacy — like applying the law — to large language models (LLMs)?
What’s a fun fact people may not know about you?
Both my dogs can skateboard, though sadly I cannot.
What are you reading or watching right now?
The Gilded Cage - Ya-Wen Lei
Call of the Wild - Jack London
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Крепестная (a period romance many have called “boring” and “way too long,” but it’s the only way I can trick myself into improving my neglected Russian)
