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Nicole Sullivan
CS Ph.D. Student

I am a fifth 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 HCI and data science, with a focus on supporting users' goals when interacting with AI systems for data-related tasks. I am advised by Dr. Magda Balazinska and Dr. Leilani Battle.

At Howard University, I was an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Gloria Washington's Affective Biometrics Lab. I've also worked with Asta Roseway and the Microsoft Research Urban Innovation Group, 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 by designing human-centered AI systems that help people make sustained progress toward their goals during complex data work.


What Do AI Agents Need to Know? Designing User-Controlled Context for Data Workflows
Onging work
2026 - Present

I am investigating what information people want AI agents to retain across data workflows, how they want to manage it, and how it relates to their goals and values. I will develop and evaluate an agent harness that enables users to inspect and control the context agents use across data-related tasks.


How Do People Debug Complex SQL Queries With LLMs? A Qualitative Study
Nicole Sullivan, Ella Cao, Leilani Battle, and Magdalena Balazinska
2025 - Present

Conducted a 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

Exploring the human-AI interaction layer of a explainable multimodal DBMS. Interested in how users query, debug, and interpret multimodal results, and how the system can best surface explanations and lineage to support understanding and trust.

Virtual Fidgets
Virtual Fidgets
Virtual Fidgets: Opportunities and Design Principles for Bringing Fidgeting to Online Learning
Sam Ross, Nicole Sullivan, Jina Yoon
CHI EA, 2023

Explored how virtual fidgets could support attention during online lectures. Through a study with eight students, we identified eight themes in their experiences and proposed four design principles for future virtual fidgets.


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 with the Project Eclipse sensor data.


Bison Hacks the Yard: Assisting Underrepresented Students Overcome Impostor Syndrome with Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence
Nicole Sullivan
AAAI Undergraduate Consortium, 2021

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


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

Assisted with the qualitative coding of an exploratory survey and participatory design workshops aimed at gathering insights of Black and Latinx students' perspectives of campus services accessibility.


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

Attempted to provide probabilistic forescasts of sea levels using Gaussian Process, Neural Networks, and different variations of these models. (Github Repo)


Source code!