HOMETOWN

LOS ANGELES, CA

Currently

CAMBRIDGE, MA

Education

HARVARD - PH.D. EDUCATION

HARVARD - S.M. DATA SCIENCE

UCLA - B.A. COMMUNICATION STUDIES

HONORS

FORD FOUNDATION PREDOCTORAL FELLOW (NASEM)

PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLAR (HARVARD)

PRIZE FELLOW (HARVARD)

MCNAIR RESEARCH FELLOW (UCLA)

view my cv here

A Los Angeles native, I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.A. in Communication Studies and a minor in Education Studies from UCLA after graduating from high school at 15 years old. While on full academic scholarship, I was selected to be both a Ronald E. McNair Research Scholar and Wasserman Scholar. At UCLA, I led a digital-communication-focused research lab, and continued on to work as a quantitative and qualitative researcher in the Graduate School of Education’s The CHOICES Project. My research garnered numerous awards and honors, including an invitation from the U.S. Department of Education to present my work for Congress in Washington D.C. and selection as a Predoctoral Ford Foundation Fellow.
 
Focusing my pre-academic career around the intersection of brand experiences & storytelling, digital media, and technology, my work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Vogue Magazine, Huffington Post, and Vice Magazine, among others. Although my professional experiences have spanned across multiple industries, one thing has remained true: I find fulfillment in leading diverse teams through envisioning and executing long-term, conceptual projects.

Today, as a PhD candidate at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, I seek to make a meaningful impact through researching how online, machine learning-driven ecologies influence youth of color as they construct and affirm racialized and gendered identities.

AI Bias in Politics, Healthcare, & Gender” | Re-Work

avriel epps-darling, Romain Takeo Bouyer, Henriette Cramer: “ARtist Gender Representation in Music Streaming” | ISMIR Conference

Logan browning & avriel epps-darling: “Dear algorithmic bias” | talks @ google

The Revolution Will be Digitized: Music, Technology, and Black Cultural Production (A Panel Discussion at MIT's #Data4BlackLives Conference, 2017)

Virtual learning might be the best thing to happen to schools.| Op-ed

how the racism baked into technology hurts teens.| Op-ed

female artist representation in music streaming (Epps-Darling, Takeo Bouyer, and Cramer, 2020) | publication

When things go viral: Youth’s discrimination exposure in the world of social media (Bravo, Jeffries, Epps, and Hill, 2019)

A Comparative Content Analysis of Anti- and Prosocial Rap Lyrical Themes Found on Traditional and New Media Outlets (Epps & Dixon, 2017)