Graduate Student

Pranav Kuttaiah

PhD Designated Emphasis in STS
Department of City & Regional Planning

I am a researcher and writer from Bengaluru, India currently pursuing a PhD in City and Regional Planning (with designated emphases in Political Economy and Science and Technology Studies) at UC Berkeley. I hold a master's degree from the Institut D'études Politiques (Sciences Po), Paris with a specialisation in Urban Studies and a research emphasis in Sociology, supported by grants from the JN Tata Endowment and the Fondation Palladio. I have also worked previously as a researcher at the Centre for Policy Research (New Delhi) and as a Fellow at the Indian Institute for Human Settlement (...

Robin Manley

PhD Designated Emphasis in STS
Department of Rhetoric

My research is focused on the intellectual history and theoretical legacy of cybernetics. I
am principally interested in the epistemological effects of cybernetic influence across the
human and biological sciences during the postwar period—from research on language
and cognition to studies of ecology, economics, and social systems. At the same time, I
am concerned with the place of cybernetics in the longer philosophical tradition
addressed to questions of teleology, purposiveness, and life—from Aristotle through
Kant and Hegel and into twentieth century debates over...

Emily Martin

PhD Designated Emphasis in STS & History of Medicine
Department of History

Emily Martin is a fourth year PhD candidate interested in the history of medicine, racial susceptibility, and diet in the nineteenth and twentieth century United States.

Her dissertation explains how American public health at the turn of the twentieth century looked to food and diet to rationalize and exercise control over disease, ensuring that the cause and spread of the disease was linked to undesirable groups with undesirable diets. She uses a series of five case studies on diet and disease in US history between 1830 and 1930 to tell a story of surprising...

Brie McLemore

PhD Designated Emphasis in STS
Jurisprudence & Social Policy Graduate Program
Degrees MPP/MA in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies :: Brandeis University (2017)
BA Anthropology/Gender Studies :: New College of Florida (2013)

I'm originally from Tampa, Florida. Prior to enrolling at Berkeley, I worked on anti-racist initiatives in the non-profit, education, and government sector. I am a current Health Policy Research Scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a Technology and Human Rights Fellow at Taraaz and the CITRIS Policy Lab, and a Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies Fellow. I am a previous Graduate Fellow at the Center for...

Farnam Mohebi

PhD Designated Emphasis in STS
Hass School of Business

I am a PhD student at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, and a researcher in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco, having previously earned my MD and MPH degrees. My research focuses on the intersection of professionals and emerging technologies, drawing from the fields of medical sociology, organizational theory, and science and technology studies. I am particularly fascinated by the evolving relationship between physicians and artificial intelligence, the phenomenon of physician influencers, and the social...

Michael Montilla

PhD Designated Emphasis in STS
Department of City & Regional Planning
Degrees Master of Science in Urban Planning :: Columbia University (2019)
Bachelor of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies (Economics) :: Harvard University (2017)

I study how emerging transportation technologies influence cities and society. Specifically, I am currently working on two projects. The first is concerned with the underlying conditions necessary for widespread use of self-driving vehicles, and how these conditions engage with and reify social and economic stratification and societal norms through logistical processes and automation. The second explores...

Lisa Ng

PhD Designated Emphasis in STS
Department of Ethnic Studies

Lisa Ng is a PhD student in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She is interested in exploring the shifting dialectic between race, waste, and technology. Her research examines how trash is used as a confrontational political tool in various social movements against local and global neoliberal economic policies, and how these techniques of resistance represent new imaginations of futurity and relationality.

Seyi Olojo

PhD Designated Emphasis in STS
School of Information
Degrees PhD :: School of Information at UC Berkeley (2026)
BA in Environmental Policy :: Columbia University (2018)

I’m a PhD student in the School of Information at UC Berkeley where I am advised by Drs. Jenna Burrell and Niloufar Salehi. Previously, I worked in NYC as a data analyst within the AdTech industry. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in Environmental Policy from Barnard College in 2018. When I’m not thinking about the social impacts of data, I moonlight as a recipe developer.

My research is primarily focused on what it means to quantify the human...

Bernardo Moreno Peniche

PhD Designated Emphasis in STS
Department of Anthropology
Degrees PhD in Medical Anthropology :: UC Berkeley/ UC San Francisco (2024)
MSc in Medical Anthropolog :: University of Edinburgh (2017)
MD :: National Autonomous University of Mexico (2016)

My current research studies the (dis)locations of topicality in relation to the emergence of zoonoses and vector-borne diseases in the Global North. My focus lies on Chagas, a parasitic disease transmitted by an insect vector, that has gained its epidemiological relevance in the US through its association with human migration from Latin America despite growing evidence of local...

Henry Schmidt

PhD Designated Emphasis in STS & History of Science
Department of History
Degrees M.Phil. History and Philosophy of Science :: University of Cambridge (2016)
B.A. English Literature and History of Art :: Williams College (2014)

Henry Schmidt studies the history of technology, environmental history, and related sciences, mostly in the long nineteenth century. Past work has focused on mathematics, instruments and philosophical method in the Scientific Revolution (via the figure of Robert Hooke); analytic chemistry and vital accounting in Victorian England; and technologies of observation in European meteorological networks up to the interwar...