I am a Bellwether Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, supervised by Joshua Blumenstock. I recently completed my Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Washington, co-advised by Sasha Johfre and Tyler McCormick, and am an affiliated student with the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS).
My research explores how to leverage computational methods and statistics to study social phenomena, typically motivated by questions in public health, economics, and sociology. I am particularly interested in how to perform valid inference using predictions from black box algorithms, and how to use AI/ML methods in a way that is both transparent and socially grounded. My work has appeared at venues including EMNLP, COLM, and the ACL Workshop on NLP+CSS.
Contact me at avisokay@uw.edu, or find me on Strava 🏃!
News
| Sep 01, 2026 | 🐻 Officially started my new position as a Bellwether Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. |
|---|---|
| Aug 07, 2026 | 🗽 Headed to NYC for the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting to present my work on [Data Regimes] and [Recruitment Driven Sampling]! |
| Jun 23, 2026 | ⚔️ I passed my PhD Thesis Defense! |
| Jun 10, 2026 | 🎓 Hooded by my amazing advisors at Graduation! |
| May 11, 2026 | 🇩🇪 Visiting the MPIDR in Rostock to finish writing my dissertation. |
| May 09, 2026 | 🧑🏫 Presented my research on randomized recruitment driven sampling in the “Special Populations” session at PAA 2026 in St. Louis, MO. [Slides]. |
| May 07, 2026 | 🧑🏫 Presented my research on the social construction of neighborhood boundaries in the “AI-Driven Data Innovation” session at PAA 2026 in St. Louis, MO. [Slides]. |
| Mar 06, 2026 | 🧑🏫 Poster presentation at the CSDE Winter 2026 Lightning Talk & Poster Session.[Link]. |
| Dec 17, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Presented my research to the Computational Demography Working Group at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. |
| Dec 03, 2025 | 🇩🇪 I joined my colleages in Rostock and presented my research at the 7th Annual PHDS Academy. [Group Photo]. |
| Nov 20, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Presented my research on benchmarking LLMs at labeling latent topics for computational social science at the CSSS Student Seminar. Link. |
| Nov 15, 2025 | 🏃♂️ Raced my first half-marathon! In Richmond, VA, with several of my friends! [Strava]. |
| Nov 04, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Our poster on sociodemographic bias in Google Street View is presented at the ACM SIGSPATIAL Conference in Minneapolis, MN. (Wang was presenting author) [Paper] |
| Oct 22, 2025 | 🏆 Ph.D. Milestone 3/n - I successfully defended my Dissertation Prospectus. Title: ‘Bodies of Knowledge’. Committee: Sasha Johfre (co-chair), Tyler McCormick (co-chair), Sarah Quinn, Brandon M. Stewart, Aylin Caliskan (GSR). |
| Oct 21, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Presented my research at the UW + Amazon Science Hub Research & Networking Mixer in Seattle, WA. [Poster] |
| Sep 24, 2025 | 🎒 First day of school - Year 3 of my PhD! |
| Aug 09, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Presented my research on Inference with Predicted Data at the American Sociological Association in Chicago, IL. [Slides] |
| Aug 09, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Presented my research on obesity conceptualization and measurement at the American Sociological Association in Chicago, IL. |
| Aug 05, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Presented my research on using LLMs to study Federal Reserve meeting text on a panel hosted by Wolfe Research. Remote. [Slides] |
| Aug 01, 2025 | 🌲 I am visiting Stanford University for the Summer Institute for Computational Social Science (SICSS). |
| Jul 12, 2025 | 🏆 Ph.D. Milestone 2/n - I passed my Department’s Comprehensive Exam with Distinction. Areas: Economic Sociology, Processes of Social Construction, Sociology of Algorithms. |
| Jul 10, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Demo’ing a new project at the Allen School - Microsoft Research Summer Bash in Seattle. |
| Jun 14, 2025 | 🇩🇪 I am back in Rostock for two workshops, one GIS and another on Data Visualization. |
| Jun 06, 2025 | 🎒 I was recognized for earning my Graduate Certificate for Demographic Methods by CSDE at UW. [More info] |
| May 28, 2025 | 🎒 I was recognized for completing my concentration in Social Statistics through CSSS at UW. [Group Photo] |
| May 15, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Poster presentation at the 75th Anniversary Event for UW CSDE. [Poster] |
| Apr 21, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Gave a guest lecture on “Artificial Intelligence” for SOC 270 Social Problems at the University of Washington, Seattle. [Slides]. |
| Apr 18, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Presented my research on Inference with Predicted Data at a Tech Talk for Elder Research in Arlington, VA. [Slides]. |
| Apr 12, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Presented my research on mortality estimation with LLMs in the “Machine Learning Approaches in Mortality Research” session at PAA 2025 in Washington, D.C. [Slides]. |
| Apr 12, 2025 | 🧑🏫 Presented my research on obesity measurement in the “Obesity, Behavior, and Novel Weight-Loss Medications” session at PAA 2025 in Washington, D.C. [Slides]. |
| Mar 17, 2025 | 🇩🇪 Traveled to Rostock for the second workshop on open science at [MPIDR]. |
| Dec 04, 2024 | 🇩🇪 Presenting my research at the 2024 Annual Academy at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. [Slides] |
| Dec 03, 2024 | 🧑⚖️ Report on Legal Financial Obligations in Washington’s Courts is published. [link] |
| Nov 12, 2024 | 🎙 Invited talk at the UW Data Science Seminar in Seattle, WA [Slides, Video] |
| Nov 06, 2024 | 🎙 Invited talk at the UW Computational Demography Working Group in Seattle, WA [Slides] |
| Nov 05, 2024 | 🎙 Invited talk at the Fred Hutchinson Deep Learning Affinity Group in Seattle, WA [Slides] |
| Oct 07, 2024 | 🧑🏫 Poster presentation at the first-ever Conference on Language Models (COLM🦙) in Philadelphia, PA [Poster] |
| Sep 25, 2024 | 🎒 Started Year 2 of my Ph.D. at UW! |
| Sep 09, 2024 | 📊 Co-instructed this year’s Summer Math Camp for incoming social science Ph.D. students for the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences at UW [Course Materials] |
| Aug 15, 2024 | 🎒 Admitted as an affiliated student at the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS). |
| Jul 31, 2024 | 🗳️ Elected to a one year term as President of my department’s Graduate Student Association for the 2024-2025 academic year. |
| Jul 10, 2024 | 📜 My paper about post-prediction inference for cause of death estimation is accepted to COLM 2024! [Paper] |
| Jul 10, 2024 | 🎙 Invited talk at the US Census Bureau for the xD team [Slides] |
| Jun 08, 2024 | 🎓 I received my M.A. in Sociology [Slide] |
| May 20, 2024 | 🏆 Ph.D. Milestone 1/n - I successfully defended my M.A. Thesis! |
| May 16, 2024 | 🧑🏫 Poster presentation at the 25th Anniversary Conference for UW CSSS. [Poster] |
| May 01, 2024 | 🧑🏫 Our poster on sociodemographic bias in Google Street View is presented at the UC Berkeley Data Science Discovery Symposium. [Poster] |
| Mar 01, 2024 | 🧑⚖️ Started my new position doing applied NLP work for Washington State Courts Washington Courts (WSCCR). |
| Oct 07, 2023 | 📜 My paper about using GPT-4 to annotate Federal Reserve documents is officially accepted to EMNLP Findings 2023! [Paper] |
| Sep 27, 2023 | 🎒 Started Year 1 of my Ph.D. at UW! |
