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Assistant Professor

gaikwad@unc.edu | Snehalkumar ‘Neil’ Gaikwad‘s Website

Research Areas:

human-AI alignment; AI and decision making; AI and policy; the ethics and fairness of AI; human-computer interaction; computing and sustainability


Neil Gaikwad is an assistant professor at the School of Data Science and Society and he also has a secondary appointment in the department of computer science at the College of Arts and Sciences. He also serves on the Faculty Advisory Council of the UNC Parr Center for Ethics and is a fellow at the MIT Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values. Gaikwad holds a Ph.D. in society-centered AI from MIT and his M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science.

Gaikwad’s research advances socially responsible design of AI systems and policy through computational approaches that align human values and ethical principles for equitable decision-making in high-stakes settings. This work has been featured in leading AI and HCI conferences as well as The New York Times, Bloomberg, WIRED, and at the United Nations. He has been recognized with the Facebook Research Fellowship, Human Rights & Technology Fellowship, Rising Star recognition from Stanford University and the University of Chicago and MIT’s highest student honor — the Karl Taylor Compton Prize and Graduate Teaching Award. As a dedicated educator and mentor, he has guided over 30 students to publish influential papers, secure competitive fellowships, and shape AI fairness policy, while teaching at Carnegie Mellon, MIT EECS, MIT IDSS, and the MIT Media Lab.