Nik Marda

Tech & Politics @Stanford

What I Do

I'm a senior at Stanford University pursuing an M.S. in computer science and a B.A.H. in political science. I work on problems at the intersection of technology and government, with a focus on helping policymakers harness and regulate artificial intelligence. Currently, I am leading the Stanford Public Interest Tech Lab and Stanford Tech History Project while contributing to a few non-Stanford initiatives in tech policy and civic tech. Most recently, I supported the Tech Strategy and Delivery Team on the Biden-Harris Presidential Transition. If you want to get in touch, send me an email, reach out on LinkedIn, or follow me on Twitter!

What I've Done

Researched with...

National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, where I supported the lines of effort focused on AI ethics and threat analysis.
Tech Talent Project, where I helped coordinate and synthesize tech strategy and delivery recommendations for the presidential transition and planning teams.
Stanford Political Science Department, where I am working on my honors thesis.
Stanford Technology Law Review, where I served as a member editor.
Stanford Cyber Initiative, where I worked on technical and policy approaches to combating deepfakes.
Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Group, where I wrote code to study teamwork.
MIT Mathematics Department, where I worked on an open problem in combinatorial geometry.

Wrote stuff...

Co-authored a research paper on team viability and fracture at the 2019 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.
Penned op-eds about supporting a prominent alumna in AI ethics, voting issues in undergraduate elections, and why hacking for coronavirus needs more humility.
Led a team that submitted a statement about loan forgiveness for civic technologists to the National Commission on Military, National & Public Service, which was also mentioned in Inside Higher Ed.
Serving as a Senior Editor for Stanford Politics, where I lead a team of editors focused on technology, security, and international relations.
Wrote an article on how to better educate AI practitioners to build AI in support of better mental health. This was based on a CS class that I helped teach in Spring 2020 called Wellness in Tech.
Wrote a paper on a machine learning algorithm for building external features into sentence embeddings and semantic similarity scores, and tested it on political tweets.

Built things...

Created cloud-related tools and workflows as a Civic Digital Fellow at the National Institutes of Health. I worked on tech products for the National Center for Biotechnology Information's website, which is one of the most accessed federal websites with over 1.5 billion visits per year.
Increasing the accessibility and transparency of data about Stanford University as a Co-Founder and Strategic Director of the Stanford Open Data Project.

Crunched numbers...

I did some data analysis for a competitive 2018 congressional race, where I applied machine learning techniques to help improve the candidate's visibility.
As Director of Technology for Stanford in Government, I developed an algorithm to match nearly 500 fellowship applicants with reviewers.
I was a teaching assistant for Art of Problem Solving, where I helped hundreds of students across over a dozen advanced math classes.
Back in the day, I won the Minnesota State Math Tournament. I also led my high school team to 4th Place at the 2016 & 2017 State Tournaments after not qualifying for the State Tournament since 2005.

Talked a lot...

Spoke on "The Dot-Gov Boom" panel, which focused on building modern websites for the federal government. My comments were picked up in news outlets and I got a classic panel picture out of it.
Answered many phone calls as a Legislative Intern for Senator Amy Klobuchar during an impeachment trial, escalating tensions with Iran, the decisive phase of the Democratic primary, and a global pandemic. I also wrote numerous memos on topics related to technology and consumer protection.
Spoke to 100+ high school students at Inspirit AI about developing AI in the public interest.
Co-hosted the Solving Systems Podcast, a biweekly conversation with calculus teacher Jake Johnson. It was an iTunes Top 150 Education Podcast.
Many moons ago, I convinced enough people that I understood international politics to qualify for the Minnesota State Speech Competition in Extemporaneous Speaking.

Drank many cups of coffee...

Artificial Intelligence
I took CS 221 (Artificial Intelligence), CS 229 (Machine Learning), CS 224W (Machine Learning with Graphs), and CS 361 (Engineering Design Optimization). My sleep took a toll.
Artificial Intelligence, but with more "ethics" and "society"
Coursework has included The Philosophy & Ethics of Information at Oxford, Designing AI for Human Well-Being, Social & Economic Impact of AI, Building Trust in Autonomy, and Seminar on AI Safety.
Computer Science
Finished the core and dumped it too.
Mathematics
Took the Honors Discrete Math Sequence. Never taking MTWThF 9:30s again.
Political Science
Completed graduate coursework in American Political Institutions and High-Stakes Politics. In Data Science for Politics, I created the class's most accurate model for the 2018 House elections, predicting 234 Democrats overall (there were 235) with 94% accuracy by race. @FiveThirtyEight please hire me!
Product & Design
Alumnus of ME410A (Tech and Innovation Foresight), CS147 (Human-Computer Interaction), and CS278 (Social Computing).
Random
Some of the best classes I've taken were Creative Nonfiction, Humanities Core, and Social Dance.

In between cups of coffee, I...

Was named a 2021 Gardner Fellow, 2020 Truman Scholar, and 2017 Coca-Cola Scholar
Served on advisory boards for Stanford's Haas Center and Georgetown's CSET Foretell
Jumped out of a plane
Became a crisis counselor for Crisis Text Line (join me!)
Biked from Stanford to a Taco Bell in San Francisco
Received a 2nd degree black belt in karate
Stargazed a lot

Site design inspired by Daniel Zhao and Jason Zhao