I'm currently a Ph.D. candidate and graduate research assistant in the Responsive Environments group at the MIT Media Lab, working with Professor Joe Paradiso. Finding creative and thoughtful ways to apply technology to issues of sustainability and human behavior has been one of the key goals of my graduate work. My research focuses on developing sensor technologies to support sustainable agriculture and food systems.
I received my S.M. from the Media Lab in June 2017; during my Master's, I worked with Professor Sep Kamvar in the Social Computing group, where I worked on software and hardware to support scalable and replicable social processes that impact urban environments. For my Master's thesis, I built a blockchain-based financial incentives system to encourage urban cycling. Before graduate school, I worked as a software engineer at Fitbit Boston, and spent a year living in Delft (NL) doing research on a Fulbright fellowship. For my Fulbright research, I applied machine learning and natural language processing techniques to social media data to analyze bicycle commuting habits, in an effort to apply my computer science background to my interest in bicycling and sustainable urban transportation. I received my B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Yale in 2013.
When I'm not working with sensors, computers, or data, I generally try to get outside (favorites include biking, hiking, and exploring cities by foot or bike), make pottery, go to museums, listen to live music (like this talented young band), read, write letters, try new restaurants, knit, or make tentative culinary forays. I also love maps!
Highly intermittant thoughts on grad school, farming, bicycling, computer science, women in STEM, general news, and more...
Pan-Mass Challenge Ride Reflection - August 11, 2019
Air Travel in Academia (on ML Medium site) - July 30, 2019
Reflections on Jackson (the film) - March 11, 2017
MAS Ambassadors (on ML Medium site) - March 31, 2016
Media Lab Application Advice - December 3, 2015
Fulbright Application Advice - August 6, 2015
In Fall 2015, I took Professor Neil Gershenfeld's (in)famous "How to Make (Almost) Anything" class. Neil is the director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, which is co-located with the Media Lab in MIT Building E14. Each week of the class, we learned a different digital fabrication technique, and then completed a project using that technique. Please see this page for pictures and in-depth explanations of my weekly projects.
Caroline Jaffe 2019