Esther Rolf, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral fellow with the Harvard Data Science Initiative and the Center for Research on Computation and Society, and an assistant professor of computer science at CU Boulder (starting in Fall 2024).
Esther’s research in statistical and geospatial machine learning blends methodological and applied techniques to study and design machine learning algorithms and systems with an emphasis on usability, data efficiency, and fairness. Some of her specific projects span developing algorithms and infrastructure for reliable environmental monitoring using machine learning, responsible and fair algorithm design and use, and the influence of data acquisition and representation on the efficacy and applicability of machine learning systems.
Esther completed her PhD in Computer Science in 2022 at UC Berkeley, where she was advised by Ben Recht and Michael I. Jordan. Esther’s PhD was supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a Google Research Fellowship, and a UC Berkeley Stonebreaker Fellowship. Esther has won best paper awards at ICML (2018) and the Workshop on AI for Social Good at Neurips (2019), and the impact of her work has been recognized with a SDG Digital Gamechangers award (2023) from the United Nations Development Programme and the International Telecommunication Union.
