Dr. Avriel Epps (she/they) is a computational social scientist and an assistant professor at University of California Riverside. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University in Education with a concentration in Human Development. She also holds an S.M. in Data Science from Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a B.A. in Communication Studies from UCLA, and is a former Civic Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell University Citizens and Technology Lab.

Avriel is currently a Echoing Green fellow, and was previously a Ford Foundation predoctoral fellow, a Fellow at The National Center on Race and Digital Justice, a Roddenberry Fellow, a Rita Allen Civic Science Post Doctoral Fellow and a Public Voices Fellow on Technology in the Public Interest with the Op-Ed Project in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation.

Avriel’s work explores how bias in predictive technologies affects racial, gender, and sociopolitical identity development. She aims to understand the complex ways that algorithm design and computer-mediated social expectations—often communicated through artificial intelligence systems—impact the beliefs, behaviors, and health of developing humans.

Avriel is also the co-founder of AI4Abolition, a community organization dedicated to increasing AI literacy in marginalized communities and building community power with and around data-driven technologies. Avriel has been invited to speak at various venues including tech giants like Google and TikTok, and for The U.S. Courts, focusing on algorithmic bias and fairness.

As an educator, she has taught and designed courses for Harvard and EdX on subjects like Digital Privacy, Data Science Ethics, and Adolescent Development.

Her scholarship has not only appeared in academic journals and handbooks, but has also reached wider audiences through popular outlets like The Atlantic and the Emmy nominated PBS documentary "TikTok, Boom." She speaks to an audience of over 75k followers on her Instagram and TikTok, with short form videos garnering over 25 million views. She is the author of A Kids Book About AI Bias (DK/Penguin Random House, 2025) and was most recently appointed as the AI-Expert-in-Residence for Black Girls Code.