Emma Pierson, who joined the UC Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) earlier this year, was recently named the department’s Zhang Family Endowed Professor.
Hao Zhang, M.A. ’05, Ph.D. ’07, contributed $1 million to establish the endowment and support junior faculty working on artificial intelligence.
Pierson’s research has many practical applications, including the development of machine learning methods to improve healthcare and public health. She is affiliated with the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab, the Center for Human-Compatible AI, and the UCSF UC Berkeley Joint Program in Computational Precision Health, among other initiatives.
“I love being surrounded by world-class scientists from every field at Berkeley. It’s tremendously intellectually exciting,” Pierson said. “I’m on a mission to talk to every non-computer scientist with a conceivably overlapping research agenda.”
Pierson completed a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University and a master’s degree in statistics at Oxford University. She previously worked as a data scientist at 23andMe and Coursera, a researcher at Microsoft Research New England, and an assistant professor at Cornell Tech. She’s received several awards and recognitions for early-career researchers, including the NSF CAREER Award, Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Early Career Fellow, and MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35.
Seeing evidence that her work has helped people is what Pierson finds most fulfilling. “I'm personally compelled by projects in health and social inequality,” she said. “My family has a history of cancer driven by a genetic mutation, which really shaped my intellectual interests.”
This fall, she’s co-teaching EECS’ Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course for undergraduate students.
“I want to make sure students realize that AI is a deeply human endeavor,” Pierson said. “The goal is to improve people’s lives, and these algorithms have powerful applications in doing that.”
Zhang said he welcomed the opportunity to give back to his alma mater in recognition of the mentorship and training he received as a student. After completing a master’s degree in statistics and a computer science Ph.D. at Berkeley, Zhang worked in the hedge fund industry for 17 years. In 2026, he plans to launch Hippocampus Capital, a hedge fund focused on financial forecasting based on AI and machine learning modeling.
“As a large public research university, UC Berkeley is such a fertile field for the incubation and growth of new ideas,” Zhang said. “I applaud efforts by the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society to both develop machine learning techniques and investigate the profound impact of AI on people's lives.”
Pierson agreed. “This support provides me with the freedom to work on socially important problems without worrying about whether they’re fundable, at a time when federal funding is becoming increasingly challenging to secure,” she said. “This is particularly important for our work to make the world fairer and more equitable.”
