Ph.D Student focused on

AI, Youth and T&S


I focus on the intersection of artificial intelligence, child development, and trust & safety—exploring how young minds learn and how AI can be designed to support human understanding.

  • I’m a researcher at Character AI, dedicated to enhancing youth trust and safety in AI interactions.

  • Previously, I completed my Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, where I worked with Prof. Alison Gopnik in the Cognitive Development and Learning Lab. My research explored how insights from child development can shape the future of AI, making it more intuitive, adaptive, and aligned with human learning.

  • Previously, I was an intern at Google DeepMind, developing cognitive benchmarks for multimodal models and investigating children's mental models of AI with the AIUX team.

  • Previously, I worked at MIT with Prof. Josh Tenenbaum in the Computational Cognitive Science Lab and interned at Google, collaborating with Danielle Krettek Cobb in the Google Empathy Lab.

  • Beyond research, I am the founder of E-liza Dolls, a line of robot dolls that teach girls how to code, merging AI, play, and education to inspire the next generation of innovators.

Yes, my name is Eliza, and yes, I work in AI—but no, I’m not a chatbot!

Unlike ELIZA, the first AI from MIT, I’m a real researcher exploring how AI can learn from human development.

RESEARCH:

Research at Google

Research Internship at Google creating benchmarks for LLM's

Transmission vs. truth, Imitation vs. Innovation: What Children Can Do That LLM’s cannot (yet)

How do children use GenAI? A look into children’s mental models of GenAi including ChatGPT and DALL-E

CONTACT

eko AT berkeley.edu

University of California, Berkeley
Department of Psychology & BAIR: Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research
2121 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94720