Helena Vasconcelos

I am a PhD student in Computer Science at Harvard University, co-advised by Krzysztof Gajos, Fernanda Viégas, and Martin Wattenberg as part of the Intelligent Interactive Systems Group and Insight and Interaction Lab. I am also affiliated with the Visualization Group at MIT with Arvind Satyanarayan. I am supported by the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship.

Previously, I completed my undergraduate degree at Stanford University, where I studied Symbolic Systems (What's SymSys?) and Computer Science, focused on Human-Computer Interaction and Artificial Intelligence. My undergraduate research, which focused on how people trust and rely on AI systems, earned me the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award and Stanford's Firestone Award for my thesis. I was in Stanford's Human-Computer Interaction Group and was co-advised by Michael Bernstein, Ranjay Krishna, and Tobias Gerstenberg. At Microsoft Research, I was fortunate to be advised by Gagan Bansal, Vera Liao, Adam Fourney, and Jennifer Wortman Vaughan. Outside of research, I spent my time involved in undergraduate student life and community, earning Stanford's Outstanding Acheivement Award. I am originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and South Florida.

Artistic Production

Executive Producer of Ram's Head Theatrical Society, Stanford 2024-2025

Ram's Head Theatrical Society is the largest and oldest theatrical organization at Stanford, responsible for putting on Stanford's completely student-written satirical-comedy musical tradition Gaieties, attended by 4,000+ people annually, as well as the yearly spring musical. The Executive Producer (EP) serves as the head of the organization with 150+ members in a given year.

Stanford's Outstanding Achievement Award