Portrait of me! Short brown hair, dark blue shirt, trees in the background.
Hi, I'm Heila!
(pronounced /hiˈlɑː/)

I'm a PhD student at Boston University's Faculty of Computing and Data Science advised by Dr. Allison McDonald.

Formerly, I was a Product Manager at Microsoft and studied Computer Science at Brown University.

I am an observant Jew, which may affect my working hours and online availability.


My research interests include computing ethics, algorithmic accountability & generative AI, data dignity, and usable security.

About

Hi! I'm Heila Precel (/hiˈlɑː prɛˈsɛl/). I'm a PhD student at BU in the Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences (CDS), based in Cambridge, MA.

I was born and raised in NYC before moving to Providence, RI for undergrad at Brown University, followed by Cambridge, MA to work at Microsoft. I spent some time as a technical project manager on the Microsoft Teams team, where I owned data telemetry, user feedback, and Responsible AI. Next, I worked at Microsoft Bing Trust & Safety, fighting data voids to improve Bing Search and Bing Chat. Finally, after an incredible semester-long break from thinking about technology at Yeshivat Hadar, I matriculated at Boston University, where I am now.

At BU, I work with Dr. Allison McDonald on projects encompassing data labor in the age of LLMs, usable security, and online trust and safety practices. You can see a (hopefully growing) list of my publications in the next section. And if you want to collaborate on something, reach out to me! I'm always excited about new projects.

When I'm not at BU, you can usually find me starting (yet another) book club, playing video games (current faves: A Short Hike, Baba Is You, & Pokemon TCG Pocket), dancing, or failing to get my cat off of my keyboard.

You can check out my incredible boyfriend's work here.

Research
Selected Publications

  • A Canary in the AI Coal Mine: American Jews May Be Disproportionately Harmed by Intellectual Property Dispossession in Large Language Model Training

    H Precel, A McDonald, B Hecht, N Vincent. In ACM SIGCHI 2024.

    Link to preprint; link to paper.

  • A New Model for Weaving Responsible Computing Into Courses Across the CS Curriculum

    L Cohen, H Precel, H Triedman, K Fisler. In ACM SIGCSE 2021.

    Link to paper.

News Coverage

  • Jews have always been prolific writers. Has AI wound up with too much of their work?

    Asaf Elia-Shalev. March 2024.

    Link to article.