Devshi Mehrotra is a recent graduate from the University of Chicago with a joint bachelor’s and master’s degree in Computer Science and a current Schwarzman Scholar at the University of Chicago. On campus, she served as Senior Chair of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, in which capacity she directly advised David Axelrod – former Senior Advisor to President Obama – on issues pertaining to promoting racial and economic inclusivity within the organization. She also served as the Executive Director of compileHer, a computer science education outreach organization which engaged hundreds of young female students in Chicago annually through conferences, workshops, field trips, and hackathons. Devshi was recognized by the Obama Foundation as an active community leader for her contributions to advancing gender and racial equality in STEM education. During her final year as an undergraduate student, she channeled her passion for criminal justice reform to found JusticeText, a public-interest technology company that leverages machine learning to develop video evidence management software for public defenders. Her company is currently pursuing paid pilot studies with offices in Kentucky, Colorado, New York, Illinois, and California. 

Devshi has additionally worked as an artificial intelligence researcher at such institutions as Google Brain, Microsoft Research, DeepMind, Peking University, and Stanford Law. She has accumulated extensive experience applying deep learning algorithms to predict the progression of retinal diseases, train robotic agents, and perform natural language processing on legal corpora. Ultimately, she hopes to utilize her engineering background and passion for public service to develop technology that strengthens the ability of governments to better serve those most marginalized in society. She is currently a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University and will be leveraging her graduate experience in China to pursue artificial intelligence ethics research with Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence director Yi Zeng.