Mackenzie Jorgensen

Seattle Villanova Kassel Oxford Münster Villanova London
MPhil/DPhil Student in Computer Science · King's College London

I am a Computer Science PhD Student funded by the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Safe and Trusted Artificial Intelligence at King’s College London. My research focus is on preventing and measuring the impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) discrimination.

I graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from Villanova University with a Bachelor of Science in May 2020. I studied Computer Science and Philosophy as a Presidential Scholar. As an undergraduate, I completed research projects in the U.S. and Germany in the fields of big data analytics, multi-agent communication and coordination, and hate speech moderation through machine learning.

*News*
| March 2021: Presented Liu et al.'s Delayed Impact of Fair Machine Learning paper at the STAI CDT's Journal Club [Slides] [Video].
| Feb 2021: My blog post went live on KCL's Utopia Now project website.
| Jan 2021: Began my position as a GTA for the Informatics Department at King's. :D
| Oct 2020: PhD begins!

Email: mackenzie(dot)jorgensen(at)kcl(dot)ac(dot)uk

Education

King's College London

MPhil/DPhil Student in Computer Science

I am developing methods to prevent and measure the impact of AI discrimination under the supervision of Dr. Natalia Criado Pacheco and Dr. Jose M. Such. I am funded by the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Safe and Trusted AI (STAI) and a member of the Distributed AI Research Group. I am the PGR Student Representative on the Natural & Mathematical Sciences Faculty Research Committee and also a Student Representative on the STAI CDT Staff-Student Liaison Committee. I am also a visiting MPhil/DPhil Student at Imperial College London through the STAI CDT.

October 2020 - September 2024

Villanova University

Bachelor of Science, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa

I completed a Computer Science Major with a Philosophy Minor. I am incredibly grateful to my amazing mentors from Villanova, including Computer Science Professor Robert Beck, Computer Science Professor Anany Levitin (now retired), Associate Computer Science Professor Edward Kim (now at Drexel University), and Computer Scientist Kristin Obermyer. Some of my most informative and fascinating liberal arts courses were taught by Peace & Justice (P&J) Lecturer Carol Anthony, Associate History Professor Hibba Abugideiri, and P&J Professor Timothy Horner. These mentors and professors instilled in me a passion to develop technology that makes our world more socially just.

August 2016 - May 2020

St. Annes College, University of Oxford

Visiting Student

I studied Computer Science & Philosophy during my junior year abroad. I am thankful for Dr. Wendelin Böhmer who was my Personal Tutor at the time; he is now working at TU Delft.

October 2018 - June 2019

Publications

Experience

AI Robustness Researcher/Developer

Ernst & Young UK and STAI CDT Group Project Collaboration

Alongside three other PhD Student colleagues, I completed a literature review of AI Robustness methods, zoning in on NLP, weight-poisoning attacks, and poisoning detection methods. We developed a project combining state of the art AI Robustness and NLP research. I was the lead point person for communicating with our stakeholder, EY, every week over the 10 week project. To learn more about what we developed, check out our GitHub repository here: RobuSTAI.

January 2021 - April 2021

Graduate Teaching Assitant

Informatics Department, King's College London

As a Graduate Teaching Assitant (GTA) for Machine Learning, I run two small group live sessions weekly for undergraduates covering the tutorial sheet for that week and any questions the students may have. The professors teaching the Machine Learning (ML) course are Dr. Helen Yannakoudakis and Dr. Oana Cocarascu. This 2020 spring term, I am also a GTA for the Big Data Technologies course. I run three online live lab sessions weekly for masters students, help answer any questions they have, and assist in marking coursework. The professor teaching the Big Data Technologies course is Dr. Grigorios Loukides.

January 2021 - April 2021

Machine Learning Engineer Intern

Human Rights Information & Documentation Systems (HURIDOCS) NGO

Used state of the art ML explainability techniques to learn about a topic classification model. Improved topic classification model performance for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Documented software and processes for future ML Engineers. Mentored by Software Engineer Gabriel Piles.

May 2020 - August 2020

Undergraduate Researcher on ML and Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Research Internships in Science & Engineering (RISE) Germany at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

Developed a successful ML/NLP framework to detect abusive language in English and German on Twitter. Worked at the European Research Center for Information Systems with another undergraduate researcher. Implemented the steps of the ML pipeline alongside H2O Auto-Machine Learning in Python. Mentored by PhD student Marco Niemann who works on hate speech detection.

June 2019 - August 2019

Undergraduate Researcher on Artificial Intelligence (AI)

RISE Germany at Universität Kassel

Worked in the Distributed Systems Laboratory and collaborated with PhD student Marie Ossenkopf who does great research on multi-agents and is a fantastic mentor. Built a deep learning framework that learned communication and coordination for a lever game. Implemented a hierarchical deep reinforcement learning framework for a multi-agent system in Lua.

June 2018 - August 2018

Undergraduate Researcher on ML and Big Data

National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at Northeastern University

Analyzed Big Data by contributing to the Northeastern Interactive Clustering Engine (NICE) framework. Worked in the Northeastern University Computer Architecture Research Lab. Programmed a Python interface and Machine Learning algorithms in C++ for NICE data analysis. Mentored by Computer Science Professor David Kaeli, Computer Engineer Dr. Shi Dong, & PhD student Zulqarnain Khan.

June 2017 - August 2017

Presentations

Awards & Recognition

Leadership & Outreach

King's College London

Villanova University

Seattle Community

Interests

Apart from my research, I enjoy most of my time being outdoors with family and friends, walking, running, hiking, kayaking, and biking. I enjoy traveling within the US and abroad. I absolutely love food so you will typically find me at coffeeshops (I'm a born and bred Seattleite), bookshops, and independent restaurants. When I'm not out and about, I'm making vegetarian food, tea, hot cocoa or reading, listening to podcasts or music, facetiming/zooming friends and family (including the doggos) across the pond, watching tv and films, or meditating. As Villanova basketball's head coach Jay Wright says, once a Wildcat, always a wildcat--go cats! \\//