Rachel Poonsiriwong

Rachel Poonsiriwong is a Singaporean researcher and interaction designer at the MIT Media Lab, where she is part of the Cyborg Psychology research group directed by Dr. Pat Pataranutaporn. Working across human-computer interaction, psychology, and artificial intelligence, she studies how AI interfaces reshape human agency, cognition and social relationships in the short-term and long-term.

Her research aims to investigate how human-AI systems should be designed to strengthen individual and structural agency without deepening the barriers faced by historically underserved communities. Her long-term ambition is to lead interdisciplinary research programs that solve human problems as we evolve alongside machine-driven intelligence. Rachel's work has been published at ACM CHI, ACM DIS,  ACM IUI, and Augmented Humans.

Before joining MIT, Rachel was a founding Product Designer at Scale AI, where she led the design of machine-learning infrastructure used to develop autonomous systems for organizations including Toyota, Nuro, Velodyne, and iRobot. She later served as design lead for Scale’s enterprise generative-AI platform. As a Senior Product Designer at Terrascope, she developed AI tools that help major food and agriculture companies decarbonize complex global supply chains. Earlier, she built anti-harassment technology at Microsoft and held roles at Autodesk and Dell. 

Her design work has been recognized by TIME’s Top 200 Best Inventions and featured by CNN and TechCrunch. She is a Design Matters keynote speaker, a two-time DesignSingapore Scholar, and a World Economic Forum Global Shaper. Rachel is also an art curator whose international exhibitions explore media art, cultural ritual, and identity across familial and diasporic histories.

Rachel studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (Master in Design Studies) before joining the MIT Media Lab, and holds a BFA in Interaction Design from the California College of the Arts.