Liza Gak

Liza Gak is a researcher and designer focused on engaging youth around the issues they care about through community-based, participatory methods. Her work aims to understand how children can meaningfully participate in designing the world they hope to lead, and how adults can creatively support young people’s relationships in their communities. Previously, she facilitated youth-led action and research around mental health and social media with the HOPE Youth Coalition, a California-wide collective of teens 14-22. Her research has been generously funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the Berkeley Center for Technology, Society, and Policy, and the Algorithmic Fairness and Opacity Group. She will be graduating with her PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from the University of California, Berkeley School of Information in May 2025, and holds a BA in Computer Science, Math, and American Culture Studies from Washington University in St. Louis.