Team — Queer in AI

Queer in AI’s mission is to raise awareness of queer issues in AI/ML, foster a community of queer researchers and celebrate the work of queer scientists. We use “queer” as an umbrella term for people with diverse non-normative sexual orientations, romantic orientations, and/or genders, corresponding to acronyms like LGBTQIA2S+. We also explicitly include those questioning their identities.
Queer in AI was established by queer scientists in AI with the mission to make the AI community a safe and inclusive place that welcomes, supports, and values LGBTQIA2S+ people. We work towards this aim by building a visible community of queer AI scientists through conference workshops, social meetups, conference poster sessions, mentoring programs, graduate application financial aid, and many other initiatives. Another crucial part of our mission is to raise awareness of queer issues in the general AI community and to encourage and highlight research on and solutions to these problems.
Queer in AI’s demographic survey reveals that most queer scientists in our community do not feel completely welcome in conferences or their work environments, with the main reasons being a lack of queer community and role models. Over the past years, Queer in AI has worked towards eliminating these issues, yet the voices of minoritized queer communities, especially transgender, non-binary folks and queer BIPOC folks have still been neglected. Our aim is to highlight issues that these communities face and work with communities to make spaces more inclusive of queer folks.
To reach out to admins, please email us at queerinai [at] gmail [dot] com. Please don't send event invites, job opportunities and calls to this email. They should be sent to the mailing list or slack instead.
If you want to send event / speaker invites, advertise call for papers or job opportunities, please send them to queerai [at] googlegroups [dot] com. Priority will be given to those organizations who have supported Queer in AI by sponsoring, donating or volunteering.
Pranav is a co-founder of Queer in NLP and currently a PhD student at University of Hamburg researching on AI ethics and inclusive policymaking. At QueerInAI, he organizes social events in NLP conferences, mentors volunteers and sets up DEI and safety initiatives.Website: pranav-a.github.io
William is a co-founder of Queer in AI and a CBI Postdoc Fellow at CMU studying AI ethics, critical AI, community mobilization, and 3D vision.
Claas is a postdoc at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is still trying to figure out why reinforcement learning is so hard, now with robots! For Queer in AI, he helps with sponsorship coordination and he is organizing workshops and social events at various conferences.Bsky: @cvoelcker.bsky.socialWebsite: https://cvoelcker.de
Danica is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at Amii, working on representation learning and statistical learning theory. At Queer in AI, she helps organize events at AI conferences and to improve trans-inclusive policies.Website: https://djsutherland.ml/
Jacob is a visiting researcher at Carnegie Mellon University investigating queer interactions with LLMs together with Queer in AI. Outside of research, he works full-time as a software engineer at CoStar Group.
Website: https://www.jacob-hobbs.com/
Ashwin is a PhD student at TU Wien where her research focuses on designing algorithms with provable fairness guarantees. She also served as the first DEI Admin of Queer In AI.
Sharvani got her BS in computer science from UCLA in 2021. She has worked on Microsoft Word, two cubesats studying near-Earth space weather phenomena, and various tech advocacy initiatives. At Queer in AI, she works on organizing workshops, graphic design, and the joys + horrors of social media.
Bluesky: @sharvanijha.bsky.social
Ankush is a PhD student at Purdue University. His research focuses on foundational AI and embodied learning, integrating perception, language, and reasoning for robotic deployment. At Queer in AI, Ankush helps with organizing workshops and socials at conferences.
Shane Storks is an Assistant Professor at Eastern Michigan University, where his research draws from cognitive science to evaluate and strengthen NLP applications. He served as a Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Chair for ACL 2025, and has organized Queer in AI workshops and networking events at ACL conferences.
Sabine is a queer person who holds PhD from the University of Edinburgh and currently works as a postdoc at the University of Bamberg. They are interested in multilingual NLP, AI ethics, science communication and art. They organized Queer in AI socials and were one of the Social Chairs at NAACL 2021 and D&I chair at EACL 2024 and EACL 2026. They also write the Queer in AI blog.
Raj is a gay New Yorker and an Assistant Professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York. His research is in artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, and machine learning. Currently, he is focused on socially aware robot navigation and explainable AI. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the City University of New York. He has co-organized Queer in AI events at AI conferences, such as AAAI and AAMAS, and co-founded Queer in Robotics.Website: https://tierlab.commons.gc.cuny.edu/
Andrea is a research scientist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the Robotics and Mechatronics Center. Her work focuses on manipulation and tactile feedback. Andrea holds a Ph.D. in Robotics from the University of Michigan. She is also a co-founder of Queer in Robotics.
Maria is a postdoctoral researcher at the Vector Institute, working on interdisciplinary approaches to AI. At Queer in AI, they help organize workshops and socials at NLP conferences and run the Graduate Application Aid Program, which supports queer scholars pursuing careers in STEM.
Bsky: @mryskina.bsky.socialWebsite: https://ryskina.github.io/
Nathan is a queer postdoctoral