PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Maria Ryskina

Maria Ryskina is a researcher whose work links language technology, cognitive science, and AI alignment. Her early papers examined compositor attribution in Shakespeare’s First Folio and how new words emerge in English. She studied applied mathematics and physics at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, earned an MSc from Skoltech, and completed a Carnegie Mellon PhD on non-standard language in 2022. At MIT, she studied how the brain and language models represent concepts; she coauthored a Queer in AI study of community-led participatory design, whose organizers received a best paper award at ACM FAccT in 2023. Since June 2025, she is a CIFAR AI Safety Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vector Institute, where she works on normative reasoning and multi-agent AI alignment.

Timeline

  1. 2017

    The First Folio model

    She coauthors a 2017 paper that uses an unsupervised model of textual and visual features to identify compositors in Shakespeare’s First Folio.

  2. 2020

    Tracking new words

    Her 2020 paper studies how new English words emerge in large historical corpora. It tests semantic sparsity and frequency growth among semantic neighbors as possible predictors.

  3. 2022

    A PhD on non-standard language

    Her degrees include a BSc and MSc in applied mathematics and physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and an MSc from Skoltech. In 2022, she completes a PhD in Language and Information Technologies at Carnegie Mellon, with a dissertation on computational models of non-standard language.

  4. 2022–2024

    Postdoc at MIT’s EvLab

    From 2022 to 2024, she works as a postdoctoral researcher in Evelina Fedorenko’s MIT lab, studying how concepts are represented in the brain and in large language models.

  5. 2023

    A Queer in AI FAccT paper

    She coauthors a 2023 paper that presents Queer in AI as a case study for community-led participatory design in AI. The Queer in AI organizers receive a best paper award at ACM FAccT in 2023.

  6. 2025

    Language models and brain concepts

    In a 2025 study, she and her coauthors find that language-only and language-vision models predict brain signals better in areas that respond consistently to concepts across modalities.

  7. Since June 2025

    CIFAR AI Safety fellow

    Since June 2025, she is a CIFAR AI Safety Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vector Institute, where she works with Gillian Hadfield on AI alignment, including how multi-agent interaction can help normative reasoning emerge in language models. In 2025, her team pursues a CIFAR-funded AI Safety Catalyst project to develop an AI Debate Framework. In 2026, she and coauthors extend their neology research to published writing and social media, comparing how new words emerge in both settings.

Career

  1. Since 2025Vector InstituteCIFAR AI Safety Postdoctoral Fellow
  2. 2022–2024Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPostdoctoral researcher

Education

  1. 2022Carnegie Mellon UniversityPhD
  2. Moscow Institute of Physics and TechnologyBSc
  3. Skolkovo Institute of Science and TechnologyMSc

From the biography.

  1. Of 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google, 446 work there nowIncludes Vector Institute. Our estimates of where the 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google and Google DeepMind work now: 446 at Google and 452 across 278 other organizations.
  2. Nonprofit roles are 2.3 times as common in AI safetyIncludes Vector Institute. We estimate where people focused on safety, alignment and evaluation work. Nonprofit roles appear for 25.1% of safety people with known affiliations, compared with 11.0% in other areas.
  3. Universities (31%) and startups and other companies (25%) employ the largest shares of 2020–2026 entrantsIncludes Vector Institute. Among 819 people whose first recorded role started in 2020–2026 and who have a known current organization, 60% work in commercial sectors (25% at startups and other companies, 23% at frontier labs and 13% at big tech, with 9 in two), and 31% work at universities, compared with 66% for earlier entrants.
  4. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes Vector Institute. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.

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 Maria Ryskina yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Automatic Compositor Attribution in the First Folio of Shakespeare - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Where New Words Are Born: Distributional Semantic Analysis of Neologisms and Their Semantic Neighborhoods arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. The Normativity Lab | Gillian K. Hadfield gillianhadfield.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. publications | Maria Ryskina ryskina.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Maria Ryskina ryskina.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Our Family — EvLab evlab.mit.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Queer In AI: A Case Study in Community-Led Participatory AI arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Maria Ryskina - Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence vectorinstitute.ai. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Language models align with brain regions that represent concepts across modalities arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Building Trust & Fairness - CAISI Year in Review report.buildingsafeai.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. From sunblock to softblock: Analyzing the correlates of neology in published writing and on social media arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.