Sterling Williams-Ceci

Bio

I'm a fourth-year PhD Candidate in Information Science at Cornell University, where I am extremely fortunate to be co-advised by Professor Michael Macy and Professor Mor Naaman. I am a member of Professor Macy's Social Dynamics Lab and Professor Naaman's Social Technologies Lab.

My research interests are in how our interactions with algorithmic technologies can result in unanticipated psychological effects, such as persuasion and false beliefs. As two recent examples of this work, I have conducted online experiments (built on prior work from the Social Technologies Lab) showing that AI-generated suggestions during the writing process can influence people's attitudes about societal issues when they represent biased viewpoints, and I am currently pursuing a second line of work showing that anthropomorphic design features in AI chatbots can make politically Conservative women (a group with a known vulnerability to sexist beliefs) more willing to believe a false stereotype about women's competence in mathematics. As an undergraduate student, I was the lead author on a paper testing the efficacy of video interventions to reduce parents' willingness to overshare about their children online, which appeared in the SRCD Conference with a top 1% award in Interdisciplinary Research, and in the journal Computers in Human Behavior in 2021 (linked here).

I enjoy disseminating my research through public speaking. I have been invited to present my research as a distinguished speaker at several university-wide events, such as the Cornell Ivy+ Deans Conference, the Cornell Board of Trustees, the Cornell Trustee Council Annual Meeting, and the Innovation Meets Impact Showcase at Cornell Tech. In March 2024, I won 2nd Place in Cornell University's 3 Minute Thesis Competition, a contest in which graduate students from across the university are challenged to present an accessible summary of their PhD work in only 3 minutes with only 1 slide. I have also been fortunate to present my research at several conferences, including the SRCD (Society for Research in Child Development), INFORMS Annual Meeting, and the upcoming APS Annual Convention (Association for Psychological Science, the largest international Psychological research conference). I have also been chosen as one of two PhD students from across Cornell to present our AI research at the 2025 International Advisory Board for Graduate Studies, to be held in Hong Kong, China.

I received my B.A. in Social Psychology along with a B.A. in the Robert S. Harrison College Scholar program (also at Cornell) in 2021, with formal minors in Information Science and Communication. I was honored as a Summa cum Laude graduate, a Merrill Presidential Scholar (the top 1% of my graduating class) and a Phi Beta Kappa inductee. In my graduate studies, I have been fortunate to receive exceptional mentorship from both of my coadvisors and many other professors along the way, which I enjoy paying forward by mentoring other students. In 2025, I published a Perspective piece in Nature Human Behaviour giving advice to young students switching fields for graduate school based on what I learned from my own experience. I aspire to become a professor after finishing my PhD.

As hobbies, I enjoy outdoor running, baking, and learning new coding languages (my favorite is R).

Publications

Most recent publications on Google Scholar.

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CV

Click here for the most up-to-date version of my CV: Link to my CV

Acknowledgments