Professor at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle, with research and teaching expertise in artificial intelligence, data science, machine learning, and search and recommender systems. A TEDx Speaker and ACM Distinguished Member.

Research focuses on task-based and conversational search and recommendation, user experience, multi-objective optimization, cold-start challenges, and agentic systems. Actively engaged in generative AI research, particularly in information access and image classification, with a strong emphasis on improving fairness and reducing bias in ML/AI systems.

Teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Information Science and Data Science, and collaborates closely with leading industrial research labs as a visiting researcher. Recent industry engagements include Spotify, Amazon, Microsoft Research AI, Getty Images, and TikTok.

Has worked on real-world problems such as zero-intent and zero-query recommendations, marketplace fairness, and task-, journey-, and mission-based ranking systems, contributing to solutions and products that impact hundreds of millions of users across global markets.