Anna Nickelson is a roboticist and published AI researcher turned policy practitioner and current fellow at the Institute for Security and Technology, where she leads the multi-agent AI risks initiative. Anna has spent her career working to ensure that powerful technologies are integrated into society in ways that genuinely benefit people by bridging technical AI research, federal policy, and governance across the full spectrum of AI risk.

At IST, Anna leads research into how coordinated multi-agent AI systems produce emergent collective behaviors that existing national security and AI evaluation frameworks are not built to handle. Her work draws on insight from her doctoral research: that groups of AI agents, similar to groups of humans, insects, or other social organisms, can achieve goals that no individual agent could. Consequently, the risks of multi-agent systems are harder to predict, evaluate, and govern than any individual system.

Prior to joining IST, Anna served as a Senior Legislative Fellow in the U.S. Senate, where she advised on technology, telecommunications, science, and research policy. During her fellowship she contributed to AI legislation addressing both federal evaluation standards and algorithmic equity, and developed hands-on familiarity with the agencies at the center of responsible AI adoption, such as NIST, OSTP, and NSF.

Before her fellowship, Anna completed a Ph.D. in Robotics at Oregon State University focused on multi-agent systems and multi-objective decision-making. Her work at the intersection of technical and socio-technical AI has been published in venues such as Neural Computing and Applications and at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO). Earlier in her career, she spent six years at Dolby Laboratories managing technical programs and multi-million dollar international events. 

Anna holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Robotics from Oregon State University and a B.S. in Mathematics from California Polytechnic State University. In her spare time, she has connected with kids across the country to teach them about robots and AI through Skype a Scientist and performed stand-up science communication at Nerd Nite DC.