Research and strategy for the human side of systems in change.
Hi, I'm Sunny — a researcher and strategist who has spent the last several years inside three of the most human-heavy systems we build: clinical research, universities, and storytelling. I'm now studying what happens to those systems as AI moves into them.
At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, I coordinated NIH-funded research on schizophrenia and sensory perception — 100+ participants, multi-year studies, work that lived or died on whether participants felt seen. At UC Berkeley, I'm finishing an M.S. in Information Management & Systems (4.00 GPA, Applied Data Science certificate, May 2026), researching how students use AI while learning, designing AI accessibility tools, and prototyping AI support for dementia care. On the side, I wrote the narrative for Abyssal Blade, a Steam game about the five stages of grief.
The throughline is the same across all of it: technology will keep getting more powerful. The question is whether the people inside it stay seen.
How I work
I'm mixed-methods by default — qualitative when I need to understand why, quantitative when I need to understand how many or how often. I've coordinated NIH-funded clinical studies using REDCap and SPSS, run usability sessions with cognitive walkthroughs and reaction cards, and analyzed onboarding behavior across 180,000+ healthcare platform users.
I work fluently with AI tools — Claude, GPT, prompt design, retrieval systems — as a researcher who uses and studies them, not as a model builder. The interesting questions in 2026 aren't about what AI can do. They're about what happens to the person on the other side of it.
And I believe strategy is storytelling. The most technically correct insight fails if it can't move people. So I invest as much in synthesis and communication as I do in data collection — whether that means a Harvard Psychiatry Research Day poster, a roadmap presentation to a university engineering team, or the narrative arc of a game about grief.
Currently
I'm finishing my master's at UC Berkeley (MIMS, May 2026) and looking for roles in research, strategy, and product — especially at the intersection of health, education, AI, and accessibility. My happy place is anywhere people use AI for high-stakes decisions, and someone needs to make sure the human side keeps up.
Get in touch
I'd love to hear what you're working on. I'm open to full-time roles, consulting engagements, and research collaborations.