About Laura Chen
Laura Chen is an AI Research Engineer at Ode, specializing in geospatial and natural language AI tools for mission-driven clients. She is also the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Civic Synergy, an organization dedicated to empowering young adults to bridge political and social divides. With a background in Chemical Engineering from MIT, her work focuses on leveraging data science and machine learning to strengthen inclusive democracy and address complex social and environmental challenges, particularly in water, food security, and climate justice.
Career
AI Research Engineer
Research, perform data analysis, prototype, and implement geospatial and natural language AI and data tools and products for mission-driven clients.
Junior AI Research Engineer
Conduct geospatial AI research, including performing exploratory data analysis and demonstrating technology viability, and present findings to clients.
Chief of Staff at Clay
Drive strategic initiatives, manage key development, partnership, and fundraising projects, support executive decision-making and cross-functional collaboration, and ensure alignment with Clay's mission to deploy AI to harness Earth observation data for people and the planet. Oversaw training and publication of world's largest open-source geospatial foundation model to date.
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Civic Synergy empowers young adults with the skills and opportunity to bridge political and social divides in service of solving the pressing challenges of our time. Politically and demographically diverse teams learn collaborative leadership skills and present policy proposals to members of Congress at the end of a 6 week program.
Program Director
Created experiential learning curriculum for communication and consensus-building and designed negotiations process for collaborative leadership programming for young adults
Research & Writing Consultant
Authored Reimagining Nonprofit Governance, a report exploring the origins, challenges, and opportunities of nonprofit governance practices. Supporting and conducting research, analysis, and writing for internal and external projects focused on alternative nonprofit governance, research partnership best practices, liberatory leadership, and other projects focused on the exploration of leadership strategies for racial equity.
Coro Fellow in Public Affairs
The Fellows Program is a graduate-level public affairs fellowship focused on effective, ethical, and collaborative leadership through focus weeks, team dynamic cohort learning, and work placements across several sectors, which have included:
- NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: To improve intra-agency collaboration, I inventoried inter-divisional workgroups and recommended best practices and agency-wide improvements for workgroups’ collaborative processes.
- Restaurant Opportunities Centers United: To inform policy making and advocacy, I administered a survey to gather information about the childcare needs of restaurant workers.
- Robert Sterling Clark Foundation: To create a launching point for alternative nonprofit governance exploration, I drafted a framing publication by interviewing field leaders and synthesizing research.
- Numina - Project: To build on Numina's NYC presence, I strategically identified use cases for transit safety technology in NYC’s public sector. I also estimated the serviceable available market related to Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding.
- Nonprofit New York - To help strengthen the Board of Directors during a time of transition, I created a report of findings and recommendations by conducting interviews and a survey for board members and staff.
Undergraduate Research Assistant in Water Affordability
Assisted research to understand, quantify, and propose solutions to a growing water affordability crisis in urban households under Professors Gabriella Carolini and Lawrence Susskind.
Interfaced with utilities and community groups, collected and analyzed spatial and non-spatial data, and assisted with writing/development of internal and external policy memos and briefs
Undergraduate Teaching Fellow
Guided and advised three first-year classes studying Puerto Rican storm resiliency, biodiversity, and sustainable long-range shipping
Climate Planning Intern
Assisted Climate Change Officer for Montgomery County, Adriana Hochberg, with climate action plan implementation.
Designed and executed Recreation Dept. equity analysis using spatial data, advanced action on development of the county’s climate equity metrics, and synthesized research on GHG emissions in waste management
Co-President and Water Summit Director
Directed global conference with over 500 attendees, focusing on water and resilient, equitable systems;
Fostered cross-sector connections and interdisciplinary and interorganizational community and collaboration through events, mentorship program, Student Sustainability Coalition
Undergraduate Student Researcher
Explored post-synthesis treatments to improve performance of energy-efficient gas separation membranes
Publication: “Free volume manipulation of a 6FDA-HAB polyimide using a solid-state protection/deprotection strategy.” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polymer.2020.123121
Engineering Intern
Assisted Executive VP.
Evaluated FL stormwater facilities, aided with cost analysis, marketing, and website design review
Education
Bachelor of Science - BS
Bachelor of Science - BS - Chemical Engineering (Concentration: Environment)
Skills
Core technical, leadership, and professional competencies inferred from her work in AI, data science, and non-profit leadership.
Geospatial AI
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Machine Learning
Data Analysis
Python
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
R (Programming Language)
MATLAB
Nonprofit Management
Strategic Planning
Cross-functional Collaboration
Project Management
Executive Support
Fundraising
Qualitative Research
Policy Analysis
Curriculum Development
Consensus Building
Civic Engagement
Technical Writing
Domains
Artificial Intelligence, Geospatial Data, Climate Justice, Environmental Data Science
Nonprofit Governance, Inclusive Democracy, Urban Planning, Water Security
Tags
Mission-Driven, Collaborative, Analytical, Systems Thinker, Ethical Engineer
Data-Driven Decision Making, Social Impact, Bridging Divides
Related Profiles
Adam Bry is the Co-founder and CEO of Skydio, a leading US drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight technology. With a background in computer science and robotics from MIT and experience at Google's Project Wing, he is focused on building flying robots that serve as critical infrastructure for civilization. He also advises the FAA on regulatory frameworks for the future of aviation.
Adam Neumann is the co-founder and former CEO of WeWork, a global coworking space company. Following his departure from WeWork, he launched Flow, a real estate platform focused on residential properties, which has raised over $100 million at a $2.5 billion valuation, backed by a16z. Neumann is known for his entrepreneurial vision and focus on community and culture in real estate ventures.
Adarsh Hiremath is the Co-Founder and CTO of Mercor, an AI-powered recruitment startup that helps Silicon Valley's biggest AI labs train their models. He dropped out of Harvard University during his sophomore year after co-founding Mercor in his dorm room, convinced that labor aggregation was the greatest opportunity of the 21st century. Hiremath was awarded the prestigious Thiel Fellowship and is recognized as a leading figure in the future of work in an AI economy.
Aidan Gomez is a British-Canadian computer scientist and the Co-founder and CEO of Cohere, a leading AI platform focused on enterprise applications. He is a major figure in the field of artificial intelligence, particularly for his work on massive neural networks and natural language processing, and was one of the co-authors of the seminal "Attention is All You Need" paper. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Oxford.
Alejandro Matamala Ortiz is the Co-founder and Chief Design Officer (CDO) of Runway, a pioneering machine learning platform focused on generative AI for creative tools. Based in New York, he is a designer and programmer working at the intersection of design, technology, and creative intelligence. He frequently speaks at industry events about the transformative role of generative AI in media.
Alex Kendall is the Co-founder and CEO of Wayve, a company pioneering the development of next-generation autonomous vehicles using Embodied AI and end-to-end deep learning. A proud Kiwi, he co-founded Wayve in 2017 with a vision to replace traditional autonomous vehicle stacks with a data-driven solution. He is also a highly cited researcher in Deep Learning and Computer Vision, with over 50,000 citations for his academic work.
Alex Shevchenko is the Co-Founder and Board Member of Grammarly, an AI productivity platform that started as a digital writing assistant. He was also a Co-Founder of MyDropBox.com, which was acquired by Blackboard. His expertise lies in new product development, product strategy, and strategic marketing.
Alexandr Wang is a prominent figure in the artificial intelligence industry, best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Scale AI, a company specializing in data labeling and large language model evaluation. He became the world's youngest self-made billionaire in 2022. In June 2025, he transitioned to become the first-ever Chief AI Officer at Meta, leading the Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL).
Ali Ghodsi is the CEO and Co-founder of Databricks, a leading data and AI company that he has helped grow into a multi-billion dollar enterprise. He is a prominent voice in the AI industry, known for his controversial assertion that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has already been achieved. Ghodsi is also an Adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley, bringing a strong academic background in computer science and distributed systems to his entrepreneurial endeavors.
Frequently Asked Questions
Laura Chen is an AI Research Engineer at Ode and the Co-Founder of Civic Synergy, specializing in leveraging data science for social and environmental challenges.
What is Laura Chen's role at Civic Synergy?
Is Laura Chen an AI Research Engineer at Ode?
Yes, she has been an AI Research Engineer at Ode since May 2025, focusing on geospatial and natural language AI tools for mission-driven clients.
Where did Laura Chen study Chemical Engineering?
She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a background in Chemical Engineering.
What AI tools does Laura Chen specialize in?
Her specialization at Ode involves leveraging geospatial and natural language AI tools for mission-driven clients.
What social challenges does Laura Chen address?
Her work leverages data science to strengthen inclusive democracy and address complex issues like water, food security, and climate justice.