BIO

Hello all, I'm #Maia (she/her/hers)!

I am currently a Ph.D. candidate in my fifth year studying in the Applied Mathematics department at the University of California, Merced under the advisement of Prof. Arnold Kim. Previously, I attended the University of Northern Colorado, where I obtained a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics with a concentration in Computer Science and a minor in Sociology. Work toward my thesis involves studying the nature of online disagreement and structural differences between different types of speech, as well as the spread of misinformation online. Equity has been a driving force, motivation, and goal throughout my entire life, and is thus present in both the interests of my personal life and my graduate research.

I would like to be a part of the growing community of individuals that are combining social justice, data, and mathematics to create measurable change toward equity.

Outside of mathematics, my hobbies are discovering/bingeing new TV shows, playing video games (primarily Animal Crossing and Pokémon), listening to music, eating dumplings, and creating art.

National Science Foundation

Maia was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to investigate the latent processes leading to the emergence of hate speech using data science, natural language processing and machine learning in 2020. She additionally was part of the National Research Traineeship on Intelligent Adaptive Systems, as well as the Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Course.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Maia began her second internship with LLNL during Summer 2022. She previously was selected to be part of the Data Science Summer Institute as a Computing Intern (Summer 2021), and served as a Graduate Team Lead to a team of undergraduates during the LLNL Data Science Challenge (Summer 2020).

RadioBio Podcast

Maia was elected as Vice President of RadioBio. She previously served as the Secretary, and additionally continues to work as an interviewer and artist for the podcast.

2022 SIAM Annual Conference

Maia was invited to talk at the 2022 SIAM Annual Conference as part of the Workshop Celebrating Diversity: Data In Action minisymposium.