I'm Lelia (lee-luh), a second year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My research interests are (in no order) applied machine learning (e.g., global pandemics, climate justice, online harassment), Black feminist philosophy of AI, and AI safety (i.e. long tails, distribution shift, safe reinforcement learning, human-AI alignment). I am an MIT Presidential Fellow, Alfred P. Sloan Scholar, and Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) Scholar. Currently, I serve as the co-president of both the Black Graduate Student Association and the Academy of Courageous Minority Engineers. I earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Summa Cum Laude, with minors in comparative women's studies and mathematics from Spelman College (Class of 2020) where I was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. During undergrad, I interned at the MIT Media Lab, Microsoft Research, Georgia Tech Research Institute, and NASA. I have been a passionate volunteer and mentor for students from underrepresented minorities through my work in computer science teaching and mentoring programs, including Black Girls CODE, Technovation, Georgia Tech Catalyst, CodeHouse, and the Executive Board of MIT's Graduate Application Assistance Program (GAAP). To pursue my goal of computing for social good, I founded Blackathon and the Afrocomputing Collective. I prefer no pronouns, but if you must please use they/them pronouns.