Her academic work is rooted in understanding online information, trust, and radicalization. Her lab focuses on malicious online behavior, including conspiracy theories, mis- and disinformation campaigns, online extremism, hate speech, harassment, radicalization, and extremism. She looks at the quality of online information, how people interpret it and trust it, and what impact that has on users. Most recently, this includes work on the incel movement and its links to acts of mass violence.
In her journalism career, she has worked as a writer and photojournalist on assignment for the Associated Press, Esquire, HuffPost, Defector, and others. She has covered civil unrest around ICE operations during Trump's second term, including spending January 2026 in Minneapolis covering Operation Metro Surge, traveled to Ukraine in 2025 to cover the war, and has spent weekends embedded with the Proud Boys in the swamps of North Carolina.
She has master's degrees from the University of Chicago (Computer Science), Harvard University (Psychology), and the University of Cambridge (AI Ethics), and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland.