About us
Effective altruism at UChicago.
UChicago EA is a group of undergrads, grads, and professional students dedicated to using reason and evidence to tackle the world’s most pressing problems. Through reading and discussion meetups, skill-building workshops, socials, career coaching, and more, we support each other in trying to help others as effectively as we can.
Madeleine Hoffman
Co-President
Madeleine is a third year from Northbrook, Illinois, studying Economics and Cognitive Science and especially interested in global health, animal welfare, and AI safety. She aspires to improve decision-making systems and create spaces for open and thoughtful conversations. Please reach out at mnhoffman@uchicago.edu, she’d love to chat with you!
Alice Cai
Co-President
Alice is a third-year from Westchester, NY, studying Business Economics and HIPS (History & Philosophy of Science). She’s interested in global health, metascience, and community building. Outside of academics, she enjoys cooking, reading, fashion, and exploring the city of Chicago! Feel free to reach out at alicecai@uchicago.edu or book a 1-1 here!
Jack Kozlowski
Jack is a rising 4th year from Denver, Colorado, majoring in data science and philosophy. In his free time, he enjoys reading, running, hiking, and (mostly) vegan cooking. Feel free to reach out to him at jkozlowski@uchicago.edu or schedule a meeting here.
Sofia Guimaraes
Sofia is a third-year from Santa Cruz, CA, studying Political Science and Philosophy, with a minor in Quantitative Social Analysis. She is interested in AI governance and finding ways to incorporate EA philosophy into public policy. Outside of EA, her hobbies include reading and exploring restaurants in Chicago. Feel free to reach out to her at sguimaraes@uchicago.edu.
Will Kyle
Will is an undergraduate studying philosophy and math. His interest in EA comes from his love for philosophy of mind, epistemics/rationality, and science fiction. He is happy to chat about anything from animal welfare to digital minds.
Mayank Agarrwal
Bio and photo coming soon.
Noah Birnbaum
Noah is a fourth-year from Long Island, NY, studying philosophy and cognitive science. He’s curious about a wide range of topics, so feel free to chat him up! Right now, his main interests include metaethics (especially as it relates to normative ethics), global priorities research, cause prioritization, decision theory and formal epistemology, and digital consciousness.
Outside of academics, Noah enjoys blogging (link here), (mostly non-fiction) reading, and (mostly urban) backpacking (fun fact: he’s been to 36 countries).
He loves meeting and talking to new people, so feel free to reach out at dnbirnbaum@uchicago.edu
Avik Garg
Avik is a fourth-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.
Carolanne Jiang
Carolanne is a rising second year studying philosophy. She is interested in AI safety, philosophy, reading, writing, and meeting new people. Towards this end, feel free to reach out or book a meeting with her at carolannejiang.com.
Join the team
Want to help shape UChicago EA?
We're always looking for people with energy and ideas. No experience required.
Isabella Duan
Isabella (she/her) was our X-Risk Initiative Lead while completing a master’s in computational social sciences at UChicago, where she also co-founded the Existential Risk Laboratory. She is now an AI policy researcher at the Safe AI Forum and has previously worked with Google DeepMind and the Centre for the Governance of AI. She holds a BSc in philosophy and politics from University College London.
Leonard Li
Leonard (he/him) was our Newsletter Lead while on exchange from the University of Hong Kong, where he studies philosophy with a focus on ethics and political philosophy. He is interested in EA-meta, population ethics, and effective philanthropy, and was previously an executive member of Effective Altruism Hong Kong.
Miranda Zhang
Miranda (she/hers) graduated in 2022 with a degree in Public Policy and was President of UChicago EA from 2021–2022. She has been an Operations Generalist at Anthropic since 2022, and 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 and helped run the EA group in earlier years. He is now a researcher at METR studying the economics of AI and how benchmarks map to real-world impacts, on leave from his Economics PhD at MIT.
Cheryl Wu
Cheryl (she/her) was the treasurer for UChicago EA before graduating in 2021 with degrees in math and economics. She is now an Economics PhD student at Yale and a research scholar at the Centre for the Governance of AI, studying growth, economic history, and political economy, especially technology adoption and innovation.
Andrew Kao
Andrew (he/they) graduated from the University of Chicago in 2020 with a BS in computational and applied math and a BA in economics. He is now a PhD student in Economics at Harvard studying the political economy of technology, from AI to the internet in developing countries, with affiliations at Harvard’s Center for International Development and Institute for Quantitative Social Science.
Anand Shah
Anand (he/him) graduated from the University of Chicago in 2021, where he studied math and economics, and was a research professional at Chicago Booth before starting his PhD at MIT Sloan. His research spans market design, information economics, and the economics of AI. He still has a penchant for wacky physics facts and would love to hear more about all things EA.
James Hu
James (he/him) was the webmaster for UChicago EA before he graduated in 2022 with a bachelor‘s degree in environmental science. After working as a global health and development researcher at Rethink Priorities, he is now a program associate at Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy), supporting the Lead Exposure Action Fund. He has also written about lead exposure for Works in Progress.