Effective Altruism at UChicago

UChicago Effective Altruism (UChicago EA) is a group of UChicago undergrads, grads, and professional students dedicated to using reason and evidence to tackle the world’s most pressing problems. We are a community that empowers and supports each other in our pursuits to most effectively help others. Through regular reading and discussion meetups, skill-building workshops, social events, global networking opportunities, career coaching, academic advice, and more, UChicago EA provides students with resources and tools to help them do incredible amounts of good for the world.

2024–25 Leadership
Executive

  • Photo of Noah Birnbaum

    Noah Birnbaum

    Assistant Director

    Noah is a second year from Long Island, NY. He is studying philosophy and either math or economics, though he is interested in a broad range of topics so chat him up. At the moment, he is interested in value theory, normative ethics, and formal epistemology as they relate to practical decision making. His hobbies include reading (mostly non-fiction) and (mostly urban) backpacking.

    He loves meeting and talking to new people, and you can reach out to him at dnbirnbaum@uchicago.edu

  • Avik Garg

    Avik Garg

    Assistant Director

    Avik is a second-year from Eden Prairie, Minnesota. He is majoring in economics and computational and applied math. He’s particularly interested in global development and AI X-risk. His hobbies include reading history and playing go.

External

  • Photo of Isabella Duan

    Isabella Duan (she/her)

    X-Risk Initiative Lead

    Isabella is a master’s student in computational social sciences. She’s excited to learn more about cooperative AI in a less abstract sense and methodologies of studying existential risks. She was a summer research fellow at Stanford Existential Risk Institute, where she considered how prediction technologies could transform the risks of war. She was also a Tianxia Academy Fellow and a Laidlaw Scholar. She has a BSc in philosophy and politics from University College London.

    Contact her at isabelladuan@uchicago.edu.

  • Photo of Leonard Li

    Leonard Li (he/him)

    Newsletter Lead

    Leonard is an exchange student from the University of Hong Kong. He studies philosophy, with a focus on ethics and political philosophy. He is interested in EA-meta, population ethics, effective philanthropy and various other topics in EA. Before coming to UChicago, Leonard was one of the executive members of Effective Altruism Hong Kong.

    Contact him at leonardly@uchicago.edu.

Alumni and Affiliates

  • Miranda Zhang

    Miranda (she/hers) graduated in 2022 with a degree in Public Policy. She was President of UChicago EA from 2021-2022 and is now an Operations Generalist at Anthropic. Miranda is most interested in s-risks, suffering-focused ethics, and meta-EA.

  • Parker Whitfill

    Parker (he/him) graduated from the University of Chicago in 2021 studying economics. He is now a research assistant for James Robinson at the University of Chicago and is now an Economics PhD at MIT. Parker helped run the EA group in previous years.

  • Cheryl Wu

    Cheryl (she/her) was the treasurer for UChicago EA before she graduated in 2021. She is now a predoc at Harvard Business School and is looking forward to getting a PhD in economics. Cheryl is particularly interested in studying political economy and autocratic governments.

  • Andrew Kao

    Andrew (he/they) was predoctoral fellow working with Professor David Yang at Harvard’s economics department and an affiliate at Evidence for Policy. They are now a PhD student in Economics at Harvard. His current research interests include political economy and development. Andrew graduated from the University of Chicago in 2020 with a BS in computational and applied math and a BA in economics.

  • Photo of Anand Shah

    Anand Shah

    Anand (he/him) graduated from the University of Chicago in 2021, where he studied math and economics. He was a research professional at Chicago Booth with Eric Budish and Jacob Leshno and is now a PhD student at MIT Sloan. Anand likes learning about market design and Indian philosophy, has a penchant for wacky physics facts, and would love to hear more about all things EA.

    Contact Anand via Facebook.

  • Photo of Tony Zeng

    Tony Zeng

    Tony (he/him) is a PhD student at Stanford, studying genetics. He is interested in improving the productivity of scientific research, incentivizing investment into under-prioritized research areas, and aging and neurodegenerative diseases.

  • James Hu Image

    James Hu

    James (he/him) was the webmaster for UChicago EA before he graduated in 2022 with a bachelor‘s degree in environmental science. He was later a research assistant at Rethink Priorities before becoming a Program Associate at Open Philanthropy.