Brianna B. Posadas

I am a PhD candidate in the Human Experience Research Lab at the University of Florida under the advisement of Dr. Juan Gilbert. I received my master of science in agricultural and biological engineering also at UF and my bachelor of science in engineering from Harvey Mudd College. I am a McKnight doctoral fellow and a UF graduate school fellow.

My research interests include the intersection of engineering, agriculture, and policy. With the advent of big data, many new fields have introduced machine learning and artificial intelligence, creating a new landscape of privacy and data ownership land mines many fields are not equipped to manage or regulate. My goal is to create better informed consumers and citizen scientists who can contribute to the big data conversation and become empowered advocates.

I used hyperspectral imaging techniques to detect AMB in apples during my master's thesis. Projects I've worked on in the Human Experience Research Lab include an all-accessible voting machine called Prime III, accessibility in autonomous vehicles, and trust in AI. I've worked in D.C. as a Media Democracy Fund (MDF) PhDX fellows studying predicitive policing, pre-trial risk assessments, and how social media affects communities of color. This research resulted in numerous writings which can be found on Medium. I am currently looking into usability studies in agricultural technologies and how to develop policies and guidelines for these studies.

For my dissertation I am creating a crowdsourcing platform to collect data for precision agriculture. I am working with the University of the District of Columbia to collect data on lamb's quarters growth in the district. My goal is to create citizen science platforms to encourage people to assist with this data collection, which will then be used to create machine learning algorithms. In turn, we could use this interaction to educate people about important agricultural issues.

Below are links to my master's thesis 2-minute video, an interview on my agriculture work for LabDaze, my latest presentation on my dissertation, and my updated CV.

• Master's Video

• Labdaze

• Dissertation

• CV

During my time as a graduate student at UF, I have founded the Latino/Hispanic Organization of Graduate Students, volunteered at Farm to School Alachua, spoke with elementary classrooms through Skype a Scientist, served as the graduate ambassador for the UF chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, wrote letters to aspiring scientists through Letters to a Pre-Scientist, and participated in outreach events with the Human Experience Research Lab.