Portfolio

Ria
Sonalker

AI Engineer & MS Data Science student at Boston University — building at the intersection of machine learning, probabilistic methods, and responsible AI.

Affiliation
Boston University · MS Data Science
Focus Areas
ML Systems · Probabilistic Inference · AI Safety
Recent
Presenter @ WiDS Conference 2026
Currently
Open to research & engineering roles
01

About

I'm an AI Engineer and researcher pursuing my MS in Data Science at Boston University. My work spans probabilistic machine learning, computer vision, and the responsible deployment of large language models — with a particular interest in how we design systems that are both technically rigorous and safe for real-world use.

I enjoy working across the full arc of a project — from formulating research questions and designing experiments to building end-to-end pipelines and shipping usable tools. I've collaborated with psychology researchers, climate-tech teams, and academic labs, which has shaped how I think about the gap between a model's performance on a benchmark and its impact in practice.

When I'm not writing code or reading papers, I'm usually thinking about how AI intersects with user vulnerability, social impact, and ethical design.

02

Projects

Probabilistic ML · Research

Scout-Guided HMC

A novel sampler that adds lightweight "scout" evaluations before each Hamiltonian trajectory, steering momentum away from low-probability regions before committing to a full trajectory. Activates only when the chain is struggling — zero overhead otherwise.

  • 4.7× ESS improvement over baseline HMC on Rosenbrock (639 vs 135)
  • Only 6.3% of steps trigger scouting; 6× ESS/evaluation gain
  • Metropolis–Hastings correction retained for asymptotic unbiasedness
AI Safety · NLP

Safety Metrics for LLMs

A reproducible evaluation framework for safety-critical LLM behavior across vulnerable user groups — focusing on content safety, minor exposure controls, and elder-targeted scam detection in Gemini and Llama.

  • 0–3 scoring rubric across refusal rate, safety alignment, intervention timing
  • Combines automated API evaluation, document analysis, and human judgment
  • Identifies overcorrection vs. under-blocking failure modes
Computer Vision · Research Tools

Anxiety Behaviour Detection in Children

A computer vision pipeline that helps psychology researchers automate behavioral coding of child anxiety in video experiments — replacing days of manual annotation with a minutes-long automated workflow integrated into a web app.

  • 584× faster labeling: 600+ videos in ~30 hours vs. multi-year effort
  • Detects child/parent/stranger with YOLOv8; tracks posture with YOLO Pose
  • Temporal freeze detection (≥2 sec stillness); outputs fear-coded CSV
Data Science · Economics

Economic Modelling of U.S. Farmer Productivity

Uncovering relationships between farmer age demographics and agricultural production across 3,000+ U.S. counties from 1997 onwards, with inflation-adjusted time series analysis.

  • Younger farmers cluster in high-productivity counties; older in low-productivity
  • Older farming population most pronounced in regions with abundant public land
  • Inflation adjustment reveals nominal figures mask real productivity trends
AI Tool · Climate Tech

GROW — GALY Resource Optimization Wizard

An AI-powered web platform for climate-tech researchers to explore and rank crops for cellular agriculture, using multi-criteria scoring on environmental impact, regulatory feasibility, and commercial potential.

  • Saved researchers 10+ hours/week in manual crop research
  • Featured at a climate tech hackathon (2024)
  • Ranking algorithm scoring on environmental, regulatory, commercial axes
03

Talks & Conferences

2026
WiDS Conference 2026
Women in Data Science · Worldwide
04

Contact

Open to research collaborations, engineering roles, and interesting conversations about ML, AI safety, and probabilistic methods.