Bio
Eshwar Chandrasekharan is an Assistant Professor in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he leads the SCUBA Lab. His research builds computational models and human-AI systems to understand and shape behavior in digital environments, with the goal of making them healthier and safer.
His evaluation of Reddit's 2015 ban of hateful communities was cited by Reddit's CEO in testimony to the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee and informed Reddit's subsequent bans. His research is cited in 16 distinct policy documents indexed by Overton, including the National Academies' assessment of deplatforming and Spain's Integration and Citizenship Plan (2026–2030). He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, a Best Paper Award at CSCW, an Editor's Pick at ACM TOCHI, an Honorable Mention at DIS, a Best Paper nomination at EMNLP, and a Best Paper Award Runner Up at WebSci. His research has been covered by The New York Times, The Verge, MIT Technology Review, and TechCrunch.
He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and a B.Tech and M.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Madras.