Sonja Johnson-Yu
About
Hello! I'm a rising fourth-year computer science PhD candidate at Harvard,
advised by Kanaka Rajan.
My aim is to understand animal communication by examining the interplay between signaling
and behavior. I'm particularly interested in how animals use signals to achieve their goals and
coordinate group behaviors. My current focus is on electrocommunication
and electrolocation in weakly electric fish.
Earlier in the PhD, I examined robustness at the intersection of machine learning
and optimization, as well as robust planning in multi-objective settings, applied to
the problem of wildlife conservation through anti-poaching patrols.
Previously, I received a BA, BS, and MS from Stanford -- my undergrad was a double major in CS and music (concentration in
conducting). During my master's in computer science advised by Chris Piech, I applied
computer vision and natural language processing to solve problems in sustainability
and education.
Recent Work
S. Johnson-Yu, J. Finocchiaro, A. Sinha, K. Wang, Y. Vorobeychik, A. Taneja, & M. Tambe.
GameSec 2023. [PDF]
J. Irvin, H. Sheng, N. Ramachandran, S. Johnson-Yu, S. Zhou, K. Story, R. Rustowicz, C. Elsworth, K. Austin, & A. Ng.
NeurIPS 2020 Workshop on Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning. [blog post] [preprint]
Collaborations & Real-World Projects
For the first two years of my PhD, I worked on PAWS (Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security), which is a predictive patrolling model that helps rangers to understand areas in global parks that are at high risk for poaching. I was very fortunate to collaborate with SMART and Programme for Belize to work on improving security for Rio Bravo Conservation & Management Area in Belize.