- Research Assistant
Web Neil S. Gaikwad
Twitter neilsgaikwad
Arts: Explore the Planet Earth
RESEARCH
Neil Gaikwad is a doctoral student, specializing in human-centered machine learning and socio-economic development. He develops human-AI frameworks to study, model, and (re)design socio-technical systems, analyzing large-scale datasets emerging from human behavior, earth observation sensors, and socio-economic interactions. Neil’s research is informed by experiences in academia, quantitative finance on Wall Street, and farming communities in the Western Ghats of India (Sahyadri). He holds a master’s degree from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Neil’s research harnesses computational, economic, and community-centered design thinking to provide real-world solutions to challenging wicked problems in crisis informatics, market design under weak institutions, just public policy design, and urban environmental planning. His current research seeks to decode the impact of the Earth’s physical processes on human societies and institutions. Drawing upon this un… View full description
Web Neil S. Gaikwad
Twitter neilsgaikwad
Arts: Explore the Planet Earth
RESEARCH
Neil Gaikwad is a doctoral student, specializing in human-centered machine learning and socio-economic development. He develops human-AI frameworks to study, model, and (re)design socio-technical systems, analyzing large-scale datasets emerging from human behavior, earth observation sensors, and socio-economic interactions. Neil’s research is informed by experiences in academia, quantitative finance on Wall Street, and farming communities in the Western Ghats of India (Sahyadri). He holds a master’s degree from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Neil’s research harnesses computational, economic, and community-centered design thinking to provide real-world solutions to challenging wicked problems in crisis informatics, market design under weak institutions, just public policy design, and urban environmental planning. His current research seeks to decode the impact of the Earth’s physical processes on human societies and institutions. Drawing upon this understanding, he is designing and engineering more efficient and equitable precision agriculture markets to help small-scale farmers mitigate the impact of meteorological disasters and institutional failures. Neil’s research is part of the MIT Quest for Intelligence, an institute-wide initiative that aims to unlock the nature of intelligence and harness it to make a better world.
Neil's research has been published in premier artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction conferences (AAAI, ACM UIST, ACM CSCW, ACM CHI) and a scientific journal (PNAS), and featured in the New York Times, Bloomberg, WIRED, and the Wall Street Journal. His honors include the Facebook Fellowship s award, an MIT Arts Scholar, an IJCAI Distinguished Program Committee Member, the ACM UIST Honorable Mention, the MIT Graduate Teaching award, presented annually to one MIT professor or teaching assistant from each school, for excellence in teaching a graduate level course, and the Karl Taylor Compton Prize, the highest student award presented by MIT in recognition of excellent achievements in citizenship and devotion to the welfare of MIT.
ARTS
Neil is a practicing photographer and an MIT arts scholar. His artwork inspires his scientific endeavors. His exhibition Beyond the Boundaries captures the complexities of our planet, including 3,000 years old glacier landscapes, the Western Ghats (Sahyadri) of India, cultures, and pressing societal challenges such as climate change. Neil's photography work has been published in National Geographic. For more information, please visit `Explore the Planet Earth’ on Facebook and Instagram.