Sanjana Shellikeri, PhD

Senior Consultant, BLDS LLC

I'm a Senior Consultant at BLDS LLC. My work is on statistical analysis of machine learning models, including large language models, for bias and disparate impact. The clients are usually in credit, insurance, employment, or healthcare.

Before BLDS I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Frontotemporal Degeneration Center. I did my MSc and PhD in Speech-Language Pathology at the University of Toronto. The clinical work was on digital speech biomarkers for neurodegenerative disease, primarily ALS, frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer's, and primary progressive aphasia.

I moved out of academia in the summer of 2024. The methods carry over more than you'd think. A lot of what I did in clinical research was quantifying language under noisy conditions and being careful about what the numbers actually meant. That part is the same.