Sonja Johnson-Yu
About
Hello! I'm a third-year computer science PhD candidate at Harvard,
currently rotating with Kanaka Rajan.
So far, my PhD research has 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.
I'm looking forward to broadening my expertise as I develop my dissertation.
I love working with latent representations and am broadly interested in
understanding the mechanisms underlying phenomena observable in the computational
world and the natural world. Right now, I'm very enthusiastic about
understanding animal communication by examining the interplay between signaling
and behavior.
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 Papers
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.