Katherine Fairchild

Katherine Fairchild was the Engineering Lead for the MIT Quest for Intelligence, where she led and contributed to the development of a wide array of machine learning models and software systems, including a robotics experiment generation and benchmarking system, a platform for scoring computational models on their alignment to neural and behavioral data collected from humans, a COVID-19 risk model for the MIT campus used by MIT leadership to make decisions about campus population during the pandemic, and an automated annotation tool to accelerate Early Childhood Development research. She is especially interested in using the tools of AI to further understanding in neuro- and cognitive science.

Katherine's approach to software engineering is informed by a versatile background: in addition to neuro/AI, she has worked in program management at Harvard University, machine learning for financial applications at State Street Corporation, and as a legal assistant. Katherine received a BA in Political Science from Dalhousie University and an MLA in Software Engineering from Harvard Extension School.