Will Epperson

I’m a Ph.D. student in the HCII at CMU advised by Adam Perer and Dominik Moritz.

My research interests lie in developing ways to make complex systems easier to use and understand for non-experts. Specifically, I am working to enable interpretable Machine Learning, often through interactive visualizations. I’m also interested in how machine learning can be applied to the medical domain to help both doctors and patient experiences.

Education

August 2020 - PresentPh.D. in Human Computer Interaction
Carnegie Mellon University
Advisor: Dominik Moritz, Co-advisor: Adam Perer

August 2016 — May 2020B.S. in Computer Science
Georgia Institute of Technology
GPA: 4.0, Summa Cum Laude, threads in Intelligence and Modeling/Simulation

Publications

FairVis: Visual Analytics for Discovering Intersectional Bias in Machine Learning
Angel Cabrera, Will Epperson, Fred Hohman, Minsuk Kahng, Jamie Morgenstern, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau
IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST). Vancouver, Canada, 2019.
Project Demo PDF Blog Recording Slides Code BibTeX

			
@article{cabrera2019fairvis,
  title={FairVis: Visual Analytics for Discovering Intersectional Bias in Machine Learning},
  author={Cabrera, {\'A}ngel and Epperson, Will, and Hohman, Fred and Kahng, Minsuk and Morgenstern, Jamie and Chau, Duen Horng},
  journal={IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST)},
  year={2019},
  publisher={IEEE}
  url={https://poloclub.github.io/FairVis/}
}
		

RECAST: Interactive Auditing of Automatic Toxicity Detection Models
Austin P. Wright, Omar Shaikh, Haekyu Park, Will Epperson, Muhammed Ahmed, Stephane Pinel, Diyi Yang, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau
The eighth International Workshop of Chinese CHI. 2020.
Project PDF BibTeX

			@article{wright2020recast,
title={RECAST: Interactive Auditing of Automatic Toxicity Detection Models},
author={Austin P. Wright and Omar Shaikh and Haekyu Park and Will Epperson and Muhammed Ahmed and Stephane Pinel and Diyi Yang and Duen Horng (Polo) Chau},
year={2020},
eprint={2001.01819},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
primaryClass={cs.CL}
}
		

Talks

FairVis
May 2019IEEE Visualization Conference

Honors and Awards

2019PURA: President's Undergraduate Research Award
$1500 research grant to continue work on FairVis project

2016Stamps President's Scholarship
Full ride scholarship given to 40 incoming freshman at Georgia Tech

Research Experience

January 2019 - May 2020Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Undergraduate Researcher, Polo Club of Data Science
Advisor: Duen Horng (Polo) Chau
Member of the Polo Club of Data Science working on novel data visulizations to find fairness issues in Machine Learning models

January 2018 - May 2019Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Undergraduate Researcher, Automated Algorithm Design
Advisor: Jason Zutty, Greg Rohling
Worked on EMADE algorithm design engine to implement sentiment analysis pipeline to analyze news articles to aid in predicting stock price movements using genetic algorithms. Led project to visualize the genetic algorithm evolution process.

Industry Experience

Summer 2019Point72 Asset Management, New York, NY
Data Analytics Intern, Market Intelligence Group
Mentor: Trevor Rempel
Worked as Data Scientist in alternative data space to clean, model, and understand large datasets

Summer 2018Ultimate Software, Weston, FL
Software Development Intern, Innovation Strategies Team
Mentor: Joseph Cutrono
Designed and developed Slack app to integrate with the UltiPro HR management tool. App published to Slack app store.

Teaching

August 2017 - December 2018Undergraduate Teaching Assistant
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Intro to Database Systems (CS 4400), Instructor: Monica Sweat
Designed projects, held office hours and graded for relational databases class.

Leadership & Activities

January 2019 - May 2020 Student Ambassador
Georgia Institute of Technology Alumni Association
Serve as official representative of the Institute at events/tours for alumni, prospective students, and special guests.

January 2018 - May 2019 Executive Board Member -- Threads Co-chair
Stamps Scholars National Convention 2019
Executive board member of Stamps Scholars National Convention, a 3-day conference with over 700 student attendees. Responsible for 20-person committee that plans and coordinates the different content threads of the convention.