PhD student, Computer Science · Johns Hopkins University
I’m a PhD student in the Social Computing group at Johns Hopkins , advised by Tiziano Piccardi. I study the gap between what people say they want from their social media feeds and what they actually engage with, and how to build feeds that take the first seriously.
More broadly I work on algorithmic auditing and computational social science. Before Hopkins, I did my MS at USC as part of the HUMANS Lab at ISI with Emilio Ferrara and Luca Luceri, and my BS in Computer Science & Engineering at Santa Clara University as a Clare Boothe Luce Scholar.
Email · Google Scholar · GitHub · LinkedIn
See Google Scholar for a full list. ‡ equal contribution.
Scaling Surveillance of Nicotine Pouch Content on TikTok Using Multimodal Large Language Models
Artur Galimov, Luca Luceri, Reid C. Whaley, Diya Saraf, David Chu, Fred Morstatter, Yolanda Gil, Adam M. Leventhal, Jennifer B. Unger
Manuscript submitted for publication, 2026 USC
The Impact of Emojis on User Engagement with Trolling Content in Online Platforms
Diya Saraf, Yuhong Liu, Hooria Jazaieri
IEEE DPSH’24: Digital Platforms and Societal Harms, 2024 Santa Clara
A small experiment: say vs. scroll
Pick what you’d tell a platform you want, then tick the posts you’d actually open.
I want to see…
I’d open…
Your result will show up here.
I’m originally from Bangalore. Outside research, I’m usually in a coffee shop, out on a run, in the mountains when I can get there, halfway through a crime documentary, or losing to the NYT Strands.
Favorite places to work from, so far:
Los Angeles
Bay Area