Yale Undergraduate, Class of 2026
B.S., Computer Science
B.A., Humanities
elizabeth.schaefer (at) yale.edu
Elizabeth Schaefer
Hi, I’m Elizabeth! My research bridges human language, medicine, and computation. At the YaleNLP lab, I’m leading a project in collaboration with the Yale School of Medicine on surgical chain-of-thought reasoning, developing and evaluating models that reflect how surgeons think through complex decisions. I was recently featured by Yale Engineering for this work.
I've presented previous work on bias mitigation in medical language models at ACL’s BioNLP workshop in Vienna. I’m committed to building equitable language technologies that move beyond accuracy, drawing on my humanities background to ask how AI can better respect the human complexity within its data.​
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At Yale, I’ve been deeply involved in campus life. I've served as the president of my residential college, a Head TA for the renowned introductory course CS50, and a recruitment coordinator and interviewer for Yale Admissions. I also enjoy graphic design and similar creative pursuits: you can explore my portfolio here.
Publications
"Gender-Neutral Large Language Models for Medical Applications: Reducing Bias in PubMed Abstracts."
Schaefer, E., Roberts, K.
"Enhancing Complex Surgical Decision-Making with State-of-the-Art Reasoning Models."
Schaefer, E., Li, X., Wang, B., Ghiassi, S., Gibbs, K.E., Pai, S.I., Vallabhajosyula, P., Krumholz, H., Schneider, E.B.,
Cohan, A., Ong, C.S.
Under review at 21st Annual Academic Surgical Congress.
“Assessing the Reasoning Capabilities of State-of-the-Art Large Language Models in Complex Surgical
Decision-Making Following Admission for Inguinal Hernia Repair."
Lee, Y., Schaefer, E., Wang, B., Li, X., Butensky, S., Flom, E., Zhou, R., Duffy, A., Gibbs, K., Schneider, E., Cohan, A., Ong, C.S.
Under review at SAGES 2026.
“Maximizing the Score in “Ticket To Ride””
Schaefer, E., Schaefer, A. J.
Under third review at IEEE Transactions on Games.
Experience
In the YaleNLP Lab, I lead a project in collaboration with eight surgeons from the Yale School of Medicine and a team of graduate students, exploring chain-of-thought reasoning in surgical decision-making.
As a Head Teaching Assistant for CS50, I instructed concepts like data structures and algorithms, provided crucial educational support during office hours, and managed a team of 35 other TAs.
I recently presented my first-author paper on bias mitigation in medical language models at ACL’s BioNLP workshop in Vienna, where I discussed methods for identifying and neutralizing gendered language in legacy biomedical texts.
As a Recruitment Coordinator for Yale Admissions, I help organize outreach events, interview applicants, and share my experiences with prospective students to make the admissions process more accessible and personal.
p.s. you can see one of the class shirts I designed in the background!
I was Student President of Morse College, one of Yale’s fourteen residential colleges, where I led a council of students in building community and planning events for over 600 peers.
