Aditya Nayak

PhD Student · School of Computing and Information, University of Pittsburgh

I am a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher working in the Sociotechnical Systems in an Interdependent World (STIW) Lab at SCI, UPitt.
I use participatory design methods to build community-centered mechanisms for responsible technology development and deployment.

Previously, I was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi, and a Research Associate on AI Governance at IIIT-Delhi.

Research Interests

HCI Participatory Design Action Research Public Sector AI Responsible AI CSCW FAccT Community-centred Design

My Research Background

Skills & Methods

Qualitative Analysis

MaxQDA

NVivo

Reflexive Thematic Analysis Semi-structured Interview

Systems Design

Participatory Design Prototyping Usability Testing

Data Analysis
& Visualization

Python

Pandas

NumPy

Matplotlib

sklearn

Seaborn

NLP

spaCy

Hugging Face

In my research projects, I have worked in interdisciplinary teams for system development and testing, with colleagues across Computer Science, Information Science, and Policy domains. I currently mentor undergraduate students from the CS Department on system development for different aspects of my doctoral research.

Education

PhD · School of Computing and Information, University of Pittsburgh (Pursuing)
Courses: Foundations in HCI; Public Interest Technology; Social Computing; Data-Centric Computing; Fairness, Accountability, Trasparency and Ethics (FATE) in AI; Psychology of Learning and Development.

Master of Philosophy · Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Thesis: ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Changing Forms of Work’ (2021)

Selected Honours

Awarded First Position, Allegheny County Case Competition (2024) — Humanitarian Advocacy for Neighborhood Disabilities and Support (HANDS): Data-curation and Tracking of Disability Benefits
Senior Research Fellowship University Grants Commission, 2020-2023
Junior Research Fellowship University Grants Commission, 2018-2020
National Eligibility Test for Assistant Professor in Political Science, India (2018)

Grants & Fellowships

Award	Year
SCI Fellowship, Dept. of Information Culture and Data Stewardship, University of Pittsburgh	2024–25
International Travel Grant, Chung-Ang University, Seoul	2019