Lesia Semenova

I am a computer scientist currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Rutgers University. Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research, NYC, and I received my doctorate from the Department of Computer Science at Duke University. My research interests span machine learning, responsible and trustworthy AI, interpretability, human-centered design, AI in healthcare, reinforcement learning, and reasoning. I am especially interested in developing tools and pipelines that facilitate informed decision-making in high-stakes domains, as well as in theoretically explaining phenomena that we often observe in practice.

Before joining Duke, I worked for two years on the Augmented Reality team at the Samsung Research and Development Institute in Ukraine. I received both my M.S. and B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Department of Computer Science and Cybernetics. I was selected as one of the 2024 Rising Stars in Computational and Data Sciences and received an Outstanding Thesis Award from Duke University.