I’m a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. My advisors are Dr. Lyle Ungar and Dr. Sharath C. Guntuku. I completed Ph.D. from the University of Delhi, India. I specialize in culturally aware Natural Language Processing with a focus on AI in Health. Currently, I am working on:

  • Identifying cross-cultural variations in depression and benchmarking its impact on AI mental health screening
  • Building a culturally informed chatbot for HPV vaccine counseling for families
  • Characterizing how and why social emotions (shame, pride & guilt) are expressed across cultures
  • Measuring harmful gender norms in entertainment media - a colab with the World Bank

Recent News

  • [Aug’24] Awarded PMCRI grant of USD 50,000 to build a chatbot for virtual HPV vaccine counseling.
  • [Mar’24] Our research on racial heterogeniety in depression is covered by Thomson Reuters, Philly Voice, Science News, Penn Medicine News, NIDA
  • [Mar’24] Long paper accepted in NAACL’24.
  • [Jan’24] Our study “Key language markers of depression depend on race” accepted in PNAS Brief Report.

Contact

299 Towne, 3330 Walnut Street,
University of Pennsylvania, PA -19104
Webpage: https://www.seas.upenn.edu/~sunnyrai/

✉ sunnyrai at seas.upenn.edu