PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Meta
Senior Researcher
December 2021 - Current | New York, NY
Senior UX & AI Researcher
Generative AI (Meta AI) | December 2023 - Present
• Lead researcher for Meta’s AI app, driving research strategy from incubation through launch to optimize discovery, engagement, and product-market fit, shaping one of Meta’s most ambitious generative AI product launches.
• Led international research in Europe and Asia that informed multilingual model training and quality, contributing to a +42M increase in DAU.
• Developed a User Education Framework to teach users key product capabilities and drive proactive engagement, resulting in a 15% increase in prompter DAU and a 2× lift in conversion rate from impression to prompt.
• Spearheaded research with product teams to establish Prompt Evaluation Criteria, enabling the shipment of high-quality prompts for the April launch milestone.
UX Researcher
Enterprise Products | December 2021 – December 2023
• Co-created a strategic initiative to develop a UX+ML User Intent Framework, driving a 12% improvement in Quality Score for all search-related queries.
• Led a human labeling UXR+AI initiative to enhance knowledge consumption accuracy across Meta’s internal content (Wikis and GDocs), resulting in a 14% boost in productivity.
• Drove foundational research to improve the tooling ecosystem, delivering $28M in cost savings and a 3.9% increase in meeting effectiveness.
• Created and launched “UX for AI,” now one of NYU’s most popular graduate courses, empowering students to design ethical, human-centered AI products and experiences.
• Taught Applied UX Research and Creative Coding, blending research methods, technical prototyping, and innovative design thinking to prepare students for industry leadership.
• Exceptional 4.88/5 course evaluation score, reflecting a commitment to teaching excellence and student satisfaction at the graduate level.
• Mentored 20+ graduate students per class, promoting creativity, critical thinking, and advanced research skills in inclusive learning environments.
New York University
Adjunct Professor | Tandon School of Engineering
August 2022 - Current | New York, NY
Virginia Tech
Research Scientist
September 2017 - February 2022 | Blacksburg, VA
• Founded and led the development of a human-centric AI system for stroke rehabilitation, resulting in a $5.1M technology acquisition and successful real-world clinical deployment.
• Developed and launched an assistive cyber-human rehabilitation platform, adopted by over 100 stroke survivors and expert clinical therapists, significantly improving patient outcomes in hybrid care environments.
• Secured over $1.5M in funding from the National Science Foundation for innovative frameworks modeling human behavior and decision-making in complex systems.
• Created a novel methodology for embodied AI systems, implemented at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, the world’s leading rehabilitation hospital, demonstrating translational research impact and securing an additional $1.1M in NSF funding.
User Experience Researcher (Contractor)
April 2021 - October 2021 | Remote
• Managed a large-scale mixed-methods research study to identify and prioritize features aimed at driving productivity and collaboration-centric features for Google Meet’s educational users.
• Research influenced the decision to design a new, intuitive interface that increased meeting sizes of up to 500 attendees for select Education, Business, and Enterprise plans.
• Partnered with the product team to ship 4 new features (Companion Mode, Polls/QA, Hand Raising, Translated Captions) for Google Meet users.
• Designed and facilitated focus groups with Executive Assistants to explore and refine new collaborative workflows that led to the team launching Live Support for up to 100,000 viewers.
SKILLS
Research & Design Programming Design Tools
Healthcare Research
Retail Research & Design JavaScript (Node JS / React) Adobe Creative Suite
Human-Centered Design HTML / CSS Sketch
Consumer & Enterprise Research MongoDB Figma
Service Design Process SQL Balsamiq
Interactive Interfaces Java
Adaptive Interfaces Python
User Feedback C#
Data Analysis C++
Annotation Interfaces C
Heuristic Evaluations
Usability Evaluations
1:1 Interviews
Co-creation activities
Rapid Prototyping
Personas
Wire-framing
User Flow Models
User Testing
Benchmarking
MaxDiff Analysis
Statistical Analysis
PUBLICATIONS
J. Clark, S. Zilevu, T. Ahmed, A. Kelliher, S. Yeshala, S. Garrison, C. Garcia, O. Menezes, M. Seth, T. Rikakis. (2021). Hybrid Workflow Process for Home Based Movement Capture, forthcoming at ACM IMX 2021
A. Kelliher, S. Zilevu, T. Rikakis, T. Ahmed, Y. Troung, S. Wolf. (2020). Towards standardized processes for physical therapists to quantify patient rehabilitation, forthcoming at ACM SIGCHI 2020 (CHI’20), Hawaii, USA, April 25 – 30, 2020.
A. Kelliher, S. Zilevu, T. Rikakis, S. Wolf. (2019). Towards the development of semi-supervised rehabilitation systems for the home, in Proceedings of the Technology, Mind and Society Conference, Washington DC, Oct 1 - 3, 2019.
S. Zilevu, T. Rikakis, A. Kelliher, J. Choi, A. Gibson, E. Bottlesen, JB. Huang, S. Garrison, S. Wolf, A.Reiss, L. Wolf, K. Sahu. (2018). A Machine Learning Approach for the Quantitative Assessment of the Upper Extremity Movement in Stroke Survivors, in Proceedings of the Conference on Progress in Clinical Motor Control: Neurorehabilitation, State College, PA, July 23 – 25, 2018.
T. Rikakis, A. Kelliher, J. Choi, JB. Huang, K. Kitani, S. Zilevu, and S. Wolf. (2018). Semiautomated home-based therapy for the upper extremity of stoke survivors, in Proceedings of the 11th PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments Conference (PETRA '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 249-256
S. Zilevu. (2019). Interactive Interfaces for Capturing and Annotating Videos. Virginia Tech. (William Preston Outstanding Thesis of the Year Award)
HONORS AND AWARDS
2024 Expert Guest Interview - PBS Nova Engineering Series
2024 Panel Speaker - Global Innovation Forum
2024 Keynote Speaker - STHLMX Conference
2024 Keynote Speaker - Design Drives Conference - Dubai, UAE
2023 Speaker - Black Product Mangers Conference - Menlo Park, California
2023 Keynote Speaker - DesignMatters - Copenhagen, Denmark
2023 Keynote Speaker - UXCon Vienna- Vienna, Austria
2023 Speaker - Munich Business and Research Innovation Conference- Munich, Germany
2022 Speaker - Innovation Week - Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
2022 MIT Technology Review 35 innovators under 35
2022 Ph.D. Computer Science Research Award
2022 Youngest Ghanaian User Experience Ph.D. Holder in the World
2022 Speaker - Northeastern University: Human-Computer Interaction for Complex Machine Learning
2022 Guest Lecturer - Digital Culture Speaking Series: Human-Computer Interaction for Complex Machine Learning
2021 Guest Lecturer - Virginia Tech Seminar Series
2021 Richard E. Nance Graduate Fellowship Recipient
2021 Walts Fellowship Scholarship Recipient
2021 Dissertation Institute Recipient
2021 Guest Speaker – UT Dallas (User Experience Research)
2021 Presenter – GEM Conference (A Cyber-Human Approach for Capturing & Assessing Human-Movement Performance)
2021 Panelist – GEM Fellowship GRAD Lab
2020 National Institute of Health (NIH) Fellow
2020 Walts Fellowship Scholarship Recipient
2020 Co-creator | Panelist – Tapia Conference: Secure Your Bag(s) & Degree(s): Graduate School Edition
2020 Presenter – GEM Conference (Evaluating the User Experience of Interactive Systems for Stroke Rehabilitation)
2020 Tapia Scholarship Recipient
2020 William Preston Outstanding Thesis Award in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
2019 GEM Full Fellowship – Ph.D.
2019 Panelist – Commonwealth Graduate Education Day
2019 Presenter – Virginia Occupation Therapist Association Conference
2019 Panelist – Institute of Creativity, Arts, and Technology
2019 Presenter – GEM Conference (A Machine Learning Approach for the Quantitative Assessment of Stroke Survivors)
2019 Adobe Scholar
2019 VT@CS Scholarship Recipient
2019 Tapia Scholarship Recipient
2019 Black User Experience Summit Scholarship Recipient
2019 New Horizon Graduate Scholar
2018 Intel Artificial Intelligence Student Ambassador
2018 Panelist – Intel Corporation
2018 Speaker – Intel High School Workshop
2017 GEM Full Fellowship – M.S.
2017 Intel Scholar
2017 New Horizon Graduate Scholar
2017 Mentor – K2C Mentorship Program