I am a distinguished postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, supported by the MIT Postdoctoral Fellowship for Engineering Excellence. I study how convergent design decisions are made in evolving team environments, including the rise of AI, changing notions of expertise, and new forms of human collaboration. My work reveals implicit and explicit design behaviors that shape what ideas move forward, and what that means for for innovation and accountability in design organizations.

I use a mixed-methods approach (e.g., observational studies of industry design reviews, controlled experiments, computational text analysis) to investigate three core areas: (1) designer attributes, (2) processes of evaluating and selecting ideas, and (3) outcomes captured in product performance and documentation. Supporting this research agenda, my ongoing work examines how power and status influence decision-making outcomes and how AI-generated changing these dynamics and the future of design work.

At MIT, I work with Maria Yang in the Ideation Lab. Previously, I completed my PhD in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, advised by Kosa Goucher-Lambert in the Cognition and Computation in Design (Co-Design) Lab. I hold a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University and have conducted research exchanges at the Technical University of Munich and ETH Zurich. Previously, my research has been funded by NSF GRFP, and UC Berkeley’s Chancellor’s fellowship. I have received awards for my scholarship from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.