My name is Adele Smolansky, and I'm an entrepreneur, researcher, and innovator! I graduated Summa Cum Laude from Cornell University with a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science as a Merrill Presidential Scholar. After one year of my PhD at Stanford University in Learning Sciences and Technology Design (LSTD), I decided to take a leave of absence and graduate with a masters from Stanford to work full-time on my startup, AI-Learners. I am grateful for the Stanford Graduate Fellowship (SGF) and the National Science Fellowship (NSF) for supporting my PhD work.

Professional Experience: AI-Learners (June 2020 - Present)

Inspired by my younger sister, who has a severe neurological disability called Rett Syndrome, I founded AI-Learners, an educational technology platform that helps kids with all abilities learn math, literacy, and social skills. Over 1000+ students and 100+ teachers across the country are using AI-Learners at school and at home to support their learning. We have 35 paying school customers. AI-Learners is the first EdTech platform to provide accessible activities games for students with diverse physical, cognitive, and behavioral abilities. Our work is supported by the the Learning Engineering Tools Competition by Schmidt Futures and NewSchools Venture Fund. We also raised $250,000 from angel investors. Check out the website at ai-learners.com and read more on the AI-Learners page!

Professional Experience: Ellerra (2024 - Present)

I am currently working as an AI and Product Engineer consultant at Ellerra. I am building an accounting Practice Management platform to make accounting processes more efficient with automation and LLM integration. My work includes collaborating with leadership to create product specifications and managing engineers to build the product. The tech stack includes React, TypeScript, Tailwind, Next.js, and a Supabase backend, and I am using Gemini to build financial agents.

Professional Experience: MoVi (May - October 2024)

At MoVi, I worked as an AI and Product Integration Contractor. In this role, I advised leadership on AI strategy to optimize internal efficiencies and develop an improved product roadmap. I also cleaned and organized customer data to support scalable operations and enable data-driven decision making.

Professional Experience: Google

I had the pleasure of working at Google for two summers as a Software Engineering Intern, where I met incredible people and became a stronger computer scientist.

Summer 2021: STEP Intern on the Google Drive Team
During my first summer at Google, I interned with the Google Drive team, working on the Google Drive Counter Abuse project. While developing interactive and secure web pages for the Drive Abuse team using HTML, CSS, and TypeScript, I became a stronger front-end programmer. I also improved my Java skills by using Java to work with APIs to access data from the backend and set proto values to support frontend logic. Since technology should be accessible to all users, I improved the accessibility of the web pages and conducted accessibility testing using Google's accessibility testing framework.

Summer 2022: SWE Intern on the Android Accessibility Team
During my second internship with Google, I wanted to learn more about how Google handled accessibility, so I joined the Android Accessibility team. I developed a new Android Accessibility Service to help developers make their apps more accessible, which involved integrating machine learning models to identify missing accessibility properties in data structures. I then used the new service to solve Talkback bugs and presented my work to the Android Accessibility team.

Teaching Experience

I worked as a Teaching Assistant for two years at Cornell University. I worked with two classes at Cornell University:

• NBA 3000: Designing New Ventures
• eLab Student Business Accelerator

Research Experience

While at Cornell University and Stanford University, I conducted research in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) field. At Cornell, I worked with the Future of Learning Lab, advised by Rene Kizilcec, and the Enhancing Ability Lab, advised by Shiri Azenkot. At Stanford, I worked with Nick Haber at the Autonomous Agents Lab. I conducted various studies including systematic reviews, interview studies, survey studies, and theoretical analysis, to better understand the complex needs of students with disabilities and their supporters. Read more about my research projects here!

Personal

Outside of school, research, working, and teaching, I love to swim, bike, run, travel, and read books. I compete in various cycling, running, and triathlon races! Growing up, I was a rhythmic gymnast, and I traveled around the country competing in various competitions.