RACHEL MA

About Me

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I am a third year doctoral student in EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) at MIT. I am part of the Algorithmic Alignment Lab , advised by Professor Dylan Hadfield-Menell. I am broadly interested in AI (NLP, Vision, Foundation Models, Robotics) to help with interactions and alignment in open-ended scenarios between humans and autonomous agents/systems for better decision making and reasoning for assisting humans with everyday tasks. I am interested in both enabling personalization to human preferences, while maintaining generalized agents. I have been supported by the MIT Presidential Fellowship.

Previously, I graduated from Brown University in May 2023, where I double majored in Computer Science and Music, both with honors. At Brown, I did research in the Humans to Robots Lab (H2R) and Intelligent Robots Lab (IRL) at Brown, under research advisors Professors George Konidaris and Stefanie Tellex.

I am also an active pianist and composer. If you would like to perform one of my compositions and request parts, contact me!

In my free time, I like spending time with friends, watching movies, reading classics (Jane Austin!), musical activities, karaoke, and drinking tea!

Contact: rachelm8[at]mit[dot]edu
Resume

Google Scholar

See my Computer Science tab for list of publications and awards/honors.

Recent News

  • I've spent Summer 2025 interning at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab under the mentorship of Kristjan Greenewald
  • Thank you to my sorority Alpha Chi Omega for selecting me as one of their Real. Strong. Women. of Distinction Award Winners of 2025. This award highlights sisters Awarded to those who are inspired by their own Alpha Chi Omega experience to become the best versions of themselves and who make a positive impact on lives around them.
  • Honored for Learning Human Preferences Through Open-Ended Dialogue to have received Best Paper Runner Up at the Generative Modeling meets HRI Workshop at Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2024.
  • Education

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2023-present)

    3rd year EECS PhD Student

    Brown University (2019-2023)

    Sc.B. Computer Science with Honors ("Skill Generalization With Verbs")

    A.B. Music with Honors ("Odyssey")

    University of Toronto Schools (2013-2019)

    Middle and High School Diplomas

    Other Certifications

    Licentiate Diploma in Piano Performance (2019)

    Associate Diploma in Piano Performance (2016)

    Associate Diploma (ARCT) and Licentiate Diploma (LRCM) are the highest academic standings awarded by the Royal Conservatory of Music Certificate Program