Bio

Elena Cryst is the Director of Policy and Society at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) where she leads the the organization's efforts to bring Stanford's cutting-edge AI research to policymakers worldwide. She also builds collaborations with civil society, philanthropy, and social impact leaders to understand how to better understand the concerns and passions of these communities with the development of these technologies.

Elena has previously served in director roles at both the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, including at that institute's Cyber Policy Center, Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. She is passionate about bringing informed, cutting-edge, empirical research into the public dialogue.

Elena received her BA with honors in International Relations and MA in Latin American Studies, both from Stanford University, and her MBA from the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business.

Education & Certifications

  • M.B.A., University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business, Business (2020)
  • M.A., Stanford University, Latin American Studies (2011)
  • B.A., Stanford University, International Relations (2010)

Contact

Additional Info

All Publications

  • How Search Engines Handle Suicide Queries. Journal of online trust & safety Borge, O., Cosgrove, V., Cryst, E., Grossman, S., Perkins, S., Van Meter, A. 2021; 1 (1)

    Abstract

    The suicide contagion effect posits that exposure to suicide-related content increases the likelihood of an individual engaging in suicidal behavior. Internet suicide-related queries correlate with suicide prevalence. However, suicide-related searches also lead people to access help resources. This article systematically evaluates the results returned from both general suicide terms and terms related to specific suicide means across three popular search engines-Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo-in both English and Spanish. We find that Bing and DuckDuckGo surface harmful content more often than Google. We assess whether search engines show suicide prevention hotline information, and find that 53% of English queries have this information, compared to 13% of Spanish queries. Looking across platforms, 55% of Google queries include hotline information, compared to 35% for Bing and 10% for DuckDuckGo. Specific suicide means queries are 20% more likely to surface harmful results on Bing and DuckDuckGo compared to general suicide term queries, with no difference on Google.

    View details for DOI 10.54501/jots.v1i1.16

    View details for PubMedID 41001680

    View details for PubMedCentralID PMC12459198

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8876-2752