Bhavana Bheem
bbheem2@illinois.edu
I am a third-year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, advised by Karrie Karahalios in the Social Spaces group. My research sits at the intersection of algorithmic justice, public-sector AI policy, and human-computer interaction, focusing on:
- Leveraging computational methods and justice-centered frameworks to analyze bias and discrimination in sociotechnical systems.
- Evaluating and advocating for policy and governance structures as critical tools to ensure AI systems uphold digital, human, and civil rights.
My work is driven by the goal of empowering communities and stakeholders to audit, contest, influence, and resist the deployment of AI technologies, ensuring accountability, fairness, and equity.
news
| Aug 01, 2025 | Interned on the Security and Surveillance & Free Expression Projects at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington D.C. Check out my blog posts! |
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| Mar 26, 2025 | Presented a poster at ACM CS & Law Conference in Munich, Germany |
| Sep 14, 2024 | Presented a poster at Caltech’s “Navigating the New Frontier: The Political and Economic Implications of AI” conference. |
selected publications
Posters
- March 2025 – Reevaluating the Platform Neutrality Assumption of Section 230: An Agent-Based Model Approach (ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law, Munich, Germany)
- September 2024 – Technology as Both a Threat and a Promise for Platform Regulation: Time, Place, and Manner Restrictions for Online Speech on Social Media Platforms (Navigating the New Frontier: The Political and Economic Implications of AI, Caltech)
Public Scholarship
- June 2025 – New Orleans’ Dragnet Facial Recognition Program Threatens Innocent People, Center for Democracy & Technology
- October 2025 – Echoes of Authoritarianism: A Comparative Study of US Social Media Monitoring for Immigration with Global Parallels, Center for Democracy & Technology