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Nicole Sullivan
CS Ph.D. Student

I am a fourth year CS Ph.D. student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Washington Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. My research sits at the intersection of databases and HCI, with a focus on how people interact with data and AI systems. I am currently advised by Dr. Magda Balazinska

Previously, I was an intern with Microsoft Research, where I worked with Asta Roseway and the rest of the Urban Innovation Group to build an air quality data visualization tool for environmental justice groups.

At Howard University, I was an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Gloria Washington's Affective Biometrics Lab. In the past, I've worked with Dr. Gillian Hayes' Social & Technological Action Research Group, and Dr. Laure Zanna's and Dr. Andrew Gordon Wilson's joint NYU CURP group. I am also a member of the Karsh STEM Scholars, a Ph.D. track development program.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me! My email is nicolesullivanmarie@gmail.com

CV  /  LinkedIn  /  Github

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Research

I aim to foster meaningful human-AI collaboration, exploring how people interact with LLMs to understand, query, and reason about data.


Understanding How Users Debug SQL Queries with LLM Assistance
University of Washington, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, 2025 - Present

Conducting an in-person user study examining how novice and expert users interact with LLMs when debugging NL2SQL queries, with the goal of informing more effective human-AI collaboration in data-driven tasks.


KathDB: Explainable Multimodal Database Management System with Human-AI Collaboration
Guorui Xiao, Enhao Zhang, Nicole Sullivan, Will Hansen, Magdalena Balazinska
CIDR, 2026  |  2025 - Present

KathDB is an explainable multimodal DBMS that combines relational query optimization with foundation model reasoning, enabling natural language queries over text, images, and video while preserving structured semantics. My work focuses on the human-AI interaction layer, exploring how users query, debug, and interpret multimodal results, and how the system can best surface explanations and lineage to support understanding and trust.


Interactive Dataset Visualization Tool for Environmental Justice Community Groups
Microsoft Research - Undergraduate Research Porgram, May 2021 - Aug. 2021

Created an interactive dataset visualization tool with R to enable environmental justice community groups to explore air quality concerns in their community and create a story.


Sea Level Predictions using Machine Learning
New York University - CDS Undergraduate Research Porgram, Jan. 2021 - May 2021

Attempting to provide probabilistic forescasts of sea levels using Gaussian Process, Neural Networks, and different variations of these models.


Soul Glow: Enhancing Digital Mental Health Support for Underrepresented Students
University of California, Irvine - STAR Lab, Aug. 2020 - May 2021

Exploratory survey and participatory design workshops aimed at gathering insights of Black and Latinx students' perspectives of campus services accessibility.


The Bison Hacks The Yard: Developing Sense of Belonging in Computer Science Community (Imposter Syndrome)
Ismail Yesir, Dalila Scott, Jenaba Sow, Nicole Sullivan,
Richard Tapia Conference for Diversity in Computing, 2020

Aims to reduce impostor syndrome in underrepresented students through strengthening data structure skills with an agumented reality application.


Source code!