Hi, I'm Kathleen! I am a fourth-year PhD student in Data Science at WPI advised by Prof. Elke Rundensteiner, where my research is focused on fair and responsible data science. My work concentrates on building algorithmic systems and technologies for tasks such as selection problems, ranking, preference aggregation, and score-based rankers that ensure data-driven decisions are made in a fair and inclusive manner.

I am particularly interested in problems that involve the design and assessment of algorithms with respect to societal impacts. My recent research pertains to designing algorithms for fairness in multi-ranking settings. My dissertation topic is fair preference aggregation.

Prior to my PhD studies, I was a Program/Product Manager for 4 years at Microsoft on the Office Collaboration team. I shipped Office collaboration feature improvements and new product features, revolving my release cycle around key user metrics, data mining of customer-feedback, A/B testing, and experimentation driven decision-making. I received my BS in Computer Science from Tufts University in 2016.

Looking for the FairRankTune toolkit? Check it out here.

Contact me: kathleen.cachel "@" gmail (dot) com or kcachel "@" wpi (dot) edu

News

Spring 2024	I won the 2024 WPI 3 Minute Thesis competition!
August 2023	I successfully defended my dissertation proposal. Special thanks to my great committee!
February 2022	Article about my masters thesis work.