PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Belén Saldías

Also known as Belen Saldias, Belén Saldías Fuentes, Belén Saldías-Fuentes

Belén Saldías is an assistant teaching professor at the University of Washington Information School whose research focuses on responsible machine learning and human-AI collaboration. She earned engineering and machine-learning degrees in Chile, led data-science work at Falabella, and joined MIT’s LSM/CCC group in 2018. Her work has ranged from Tweet Moodifier and Gobo to machine-translation evaluation, qualitative analysis, and child-centered content moderation. With Irti Haq, she studied how dialect and stated user profiles affect language-model responses in 2026; by May 2026, she had been selected as an inaugural recipient of the Google Higher Ed Faculty AI Fellowship for North America.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2012–2017

    Engineering and machine learning at PUC

    From 2012 to 2017, she studies engineering and computer science at PUC and earns a B.S. She completes an M.Sc. in machine learning at PUC in 2017.

  2. 2016–2018

    Harvard research and Falabella data science

    In 2016–2017, she is a research assistant at Harvard’s IACS. From 2016 to 2018, she works as a lead data scientist at Falabella.com. She is also an adjunct professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile from 2017 to 2018.

  3. 2018–2020

    Tweet Moodifier, Gobo, and personal narratives

    She joins MIT’s LSM/CCC group as a research assistant in 2018. In 2019, she coauthors Tweet Moodifier, a Chrome extension that marks emotional content in Twitter feeds, and Gobo, an open-source social-media browser for filtering content across platforms. With Deb Roy, she studies spoken personal narratives in 2020 using a corpus of 10,296 clauses from 594 video transcripts.

  4. 2021–2022

    Google Translate and machine translation evaluation

    In 2021, she is a summer research intern with Google Translate in Montreal. In 2022, she coauthors Toward More Effective Human Evaluation for Machine Translation, which uses stratified sampling and control variates to improve estimates from a fixed annotation budget.

  5. January 2023

    MIT–Chile workshops and a graduate award

    In January 2023, she leads MIT–Chile workshops on human-centered machine learning, natural language processing, data visualization, and causal inference. She receives an MIT Graduate Women of Excellence Award in 2023.

  6. 2024–2025

    SenseMate and child-centered moderation

    In 2024, she coauthors SenseMate, a human-AI platform for qualitative data analysis. Her 2024 paper on child-centered content exposure and moderation sets out design considerations for a family-guided system. She completes her Ph.D. at MIT’s Media Lab and the Center for Constructive Communication in 2025.

  7. 2025

    Assistant teaching professor at UW

    She joins the University of Washington Information School as an assistant teaching professor for the start of the 2025–26 academic year.

  8. February 2026

    Affiliated faculty at UW

    In February 2026, the Center for an Informed Public names her an affiliated faculty member for a two-year renewable term. Her research focuses on human-centered machine learning, human-AI collaboration, user agency, and governance.

  9. April 2026–May 2026

    Dialect vs Demographics and a fellowship

    With Irti Haq, she submits Dialect vs Demographics in April 2026, analyzing over 24,000 responses from two open-weight LLMs to compare explicit user profiles with dialect cues. By May 2026, she is selected as an inaugural recipient of the Google Higher Ed Faculty AI Fellowship for North America.

  10. As of October 2026

    Assistant teaching professor at UW

    She is an assistant teaching professor at the University of Washington Information School and teaches Generative AI Ethics and Data Justice. On October 2, 2026, she participates in the Society + Technology at UW symposium.

Career

  1. Since 2026University of WashingtonAffiliated Faculty Member, Center for an Informed Public
  2. Since 2025University of WashingtonAssistant Teaching Professor
  3. 2021GoogleSummer Research Intern, Google Translate
  4. From 2018Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyResearch Assistant, LSM/CCC group
  5. 2017–2018Pontifical Catholic University of ChileAdjunct Professor
  6. 2016–2017Harvard UniversityResearch Assistant, IACS
  7. 2016–2018Falabella.comLead Data Scientist

Education

  1. 2025Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPh.D., Media Lab and Center for Constructive Communication
  2. 2017Pontifical Catholic University of ChileB.S. in Engineering and Computer Science
  3. 2017Pontifical Catholic University of ChileM.Sc. in Machine Learning

From the biography.

Checked career sources: cip.uw.edu.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Belén Saldías yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Belén Saldías belencarolina.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. Belén Saldías - MIT Center for Constructive Communication ccc.mit.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. Tweet Moodifier: Towards giving emotional awareness to Twitter users arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. Gobo: A System for Exploring User Control of Invisible Algorithms in Social Media media.mit.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. Exploring aspects of similarity between spoken personal narratives by disentangling them into narrative clause types aclanthology.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. Toward More Effective Human Evaluation for Machine Translation aclanthology.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  7. MIT–Chile Research Workshops | Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and Data Visualization media.mit.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  8. Belén Saldías Fuentes and Ufuoma Ovienmhada honored during 2023 MIT Graduate Women of Excellence Ceremony media.mit.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  9. SenseMate: An Accessible and Beginner-Friendly Human-AI Platform for Qualitative Data Analysis dspace.mit.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  10. Designing Child-Centered Content Exposure and Moderation arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  11. iSchool Directory | Information School | University of Washington ischool.uw.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  12. Four scholars to join the Information School faculty | Information School | University of Washington ischool.uw.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  13. CIP announces appointments for 6 new faculty members | Center for an Informed Public cip.uw.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  14. Dialect vs Demographics: Quantifying LLM Bias from Implicit Linguistic Signals vs. Explicit User Profiles arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  15. May 19, 2026 | Information School | University of Washington ischool.uw.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  16. Society + Technology event assembles array of UW scholars | Information School | University of Washington ischool.uw.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.