AI, Emotions, and Human Wellbeing - 4:30pm

Laura Reiley is a science writer for Cornell University. She has spent her career largely writing about the food system and agriculture. She was most recently the business of food reporter at the Washington Post. She was previously a food critic and food industry reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Baltimore Sun. She has authored four books, has cooked professionally and is a graduate of the California Culinary Academy. She is a four-time James Beard finalist and in 2017 was a Pulitzer finalist. She is not an expert in mental health and AI, but on Feb. 4, 2025, her daughter, Sophie Rottenberg, killed herself after a short illness and long interaction with an AI chatbot. Reiley wrote about Sophie's death in a guest essay for the New York Times in August.

Robbie Torney is Head of AI & Digital Assessments at Common Sense Media, where he leads organizational AI work around AI safety, risk assessment, and policy. Under his leadership, Common Sense has developed and launched comprehensive AI risk assessments of major platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Meta AI. His work has supported AI literacy for teachers and students, established thought leadership in the rapidly evolving AI landscape, and pursued policies to maximize the upsides and minimize the risks associated with this emerging technology.

Robbie has testified before Congress and the California Legislature on AI safety for youth. He works directly with major technology companies to shape industry standards while maintaining Common Sense Media's independence in evaluation and advocacy.

Drawing from over a decade of experience in education as a teacher, principal, and school network leader in Oakland, CA, Robbie brings a unique perspective to AI policy and child safety. His classroom experience grounds his understanding of how AI technologies actually affect students and families in real-world settings, making him a passionate and informed advocate for responsible AI development that protects children while supporting innovation.

Stephen Schueller, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology and Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, Riverside, his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and completed his clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco as part of the Public Health and Minority Cluster at San Francisco General Hospital.  As a clinical psychologist and mental health services researcher, Dr. Schueller’s research focuses on how technology can improve mental health services by expanding access and improving accessibility. For over two decades he has conducted work on the development, evaluation, and implementation of digital mental health treatments in diverse settings and populations. At UCI, he directs the Technology and Mental Health (TEAM) Lab, is the Director of the Dissemination and Implementation Unit for the Institute of Clinical and Translational Science and is a member of UCI’s Connected Learning Lab and the Jacobs CERES Center. He is a founding board member and current President of the Society for Digital Mental Health.

Dr. Sachin Pendse is the founding director of the Technology, Mental Health, and Society (TeMHSo) Lab at UCSF. He investigates the role of societal factors in how people conceptualize/express their mental health and search for care online, towards the design of mental health support technologies that are fundamentally safe, private, and consent-forward by design. He earned his doctorate in Human-Centered Computing from the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

Greg Niemeyer is a data artist. Loading his web page consumes about 65 watts per hour. Niemeyer co-founded the Berkeley Center for New Media(, focusing on the critical analysis of new media and human experiences. His work focuses on data circulations among individuals, communities and environments. His projects often materialize data in a way that people can feel.

Niemeyer's work includes collaborations across disciplines and media, always focusing on emotional responses to data. His work on data sonification goes back to 2000, when he worked with Chris Chafe to sonify network response rates in an interactive installation for SFMOMA’s visionary 010101 show. Currently, Niemeyer is working on visualizing water resource dynamics.

Niemeyer teaches Data Arts, Game Design, and Music Video Production, as well as Graduate Seminars. He received major grants from the McArthur Foundation, Intel, the Hewlett Foundation and he is the current recipient of the Toban Family Faculty Fellowship.

Dr. Chelle Gentemann is the Open Science Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters Science Mission Directorate Office of the Chief Science Data Officer, on an Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) assignment from the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI). For 30 years, she has worked on satellite missions studying Earth's oceans and climate from space, leading research on open science, cloud computing, and remote sensing.

Dr. Gentemann led NASA's Transform to Open Science Initiative and co-chaired the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Subcommittee on the Year of Open Science, a collaboration across 17 federal agencies. In 2025, she received the American Geophysical Union's Open Science Prize for this work. She was awarded AGU's Falkenberg Award and named one of 15 Leading Women in Machine Learning for Earth Observation by the Radiant Earth Foundation.

Her current work explores the intersection of open science, creativity, and human flourishing, including collaborations with artist Greg Niemeyer and musician Jewel. She investigates how these elements impact the pace of scientific discovery and the accessibility of science to broader communities. She has testified before Congress and served as co-chair of National Academy of Sciences committees on open code policy and Earth science applications from space.

Jesse R. Fleming is an internationally exhibited artist and immersive technology designer working at the intersection of contemplative science, emerging technology, and embodied experience. He is the founder and director of The Awareness Lab (awarenesslab.io), an independent creative research studio producing experiential artworks, experimental systems, and applied design frameworks across cultural, research, and real-world contexts. His work explores how designed encounters can transform perception and relational awareness, and he collaborates with partners across the academic and private sector on technologies for well-being.

Dr. Marjan Sharifi, is a cognitive scientist whose expertise spans neuroscience, psychology, philosophy and the arts. She has examined the creative thinking process and how it relates to mind-wandering for nearly a decade, a fascination that began during her PhD in psychology which was completed at the social neuroscience department at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. Since 2018, when she was invited as a visiting scholar in the philosophy department at UC Berkeley, she has directed her research to influence the development of safe and ethical AI by collaborating with the Center for Human Compatible AI at Berkeley (CHAI). The collaboration with AI scientists inspired her Marie Curie Global Fellowship project which aims to reverse engineer creative thinking by guiding where people mind wander. The project is based at UC Berkeley within the social interaction lab led by Prof. Dacher Keltner in the psychology department. She also has continued her collaborations with AI researchers at CHAI with a current project which explores how to expand alignment research beyond optimization, drawing on her empirical work on creative thinking. In addition to her research at Berkeley, she is also a Visiting assistant professor of cognitive science at Pomona College.

Juliana Schroeder is the Harold Furst Chair in Management Philosophy and Values Professor at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Schroeder is a behavioral scientist who researches the psychological processes by which people think about the minds of other people, particularly in workplace contexts. The attributions that people make about others’ minds are consequential because they underlie decisions about how to interact with others, such as whether to help or harm them. For instance, determining whether a negotiation partner is trustworthy affects willingness to cooperate. Determining whether an outgroup member is competent affects moral concern for their well-being. Schroeder uses experiments to understand how people make inferences about other minds, and test the consequences of their inferences.

Dr. Julie Cachia, PhD is a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Flourish Science, where she translates psychological research into practical tools for everyday well-being. At Flourish, she develops science-based content and leads large-scale, multi-institutional randomized controlled trials evaluating AI-enabled well-being interventions in real-world settings. She earned her PhD in Affective Science at Stanford University, where her research focused on emotion, culture, and close relationships. Her work explores what people want to feel in life, the kinds of relationships they hope to build, and how cultural contexts shape these preferences.  Prior to Stanford, Julie earned her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in psychology at New York University, where she conducted research on motivation and communication among romantic partners.

Saumya Gupta (Saum) is the co-founder of Build IRL, a launchpad for in-person clubs. She 

spent over a decade in healthcare across Google Health, Fitbit, McKinsey, and 

Cipla. Her blogs and podcasts on loneliness have reached over 1M people. Saum holds an 

MBA from Harvard and an engineering degree from IIT Bombay. Based in San Francisco, she cares about building a healthier, more connected world for her little daughter and her

friends. 

Mark Barger Elliott is a co-founder of Emotect ai and thinks of himself as an idea architect.  He developed the initial concept of Emotional Architecture—a framework exploring how emotions shape decision-making, identity, and human behavior. He is the author of two forthcoming books: Life Equations: Formulas for a Life that Adds Up and Write Human: A Field Guide for Creators in the Age of AII. He is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker, illuminating the lives of Nashville songwriters and the Lost Boys of Sudan.