I was born in Santa Fe, NM to rebellious parents drawn to the physical beauty and cultural freedom of the southwest. As an unintelligibly queer youth, I found my place in alternative art, music, literature circles. I chanced into participating in the Bali Art Project, and was able to spend some time in Bali studying the local art, music and culture. A year into majoring in music and art, I felt more drawn to the academic study of philosophy and math, and managed to transfer from UNM to Amherst College. Piecing together my intense (but vague) interests in AI, collaboration, semantics and logic, I had the good fortune to end up studying these topics in graduate school at Rutgers. The amazing group of people I met and learned from there changed everything, especially my spouse and collaborator Sarah Murray.

In 2017, I was tenured at Cornell. I now have two sparkling, quirky children who teach me and help me to grow every (damn) day.

I now use 'W. Starr' in print, and my name is 'Willow Starr'. In person, I go by both 'Willow' and 'Starr', and my pronouns are 'they'/'she'. I am a transgender non-binary femme (a femme 'non-binary woman', in the sense that I don't strictly identify as a man or a woman but present and socialize in ways that are practiced primarily, though not exclusively, by femme women). Sometimes queer lives are complicated ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Beyond my professional life, I spend my time enjoying nature (primarily cycling and hiking) and building community through family, food justice, art, dance, music, and political struggle.

I am a first-generation college student, and have struggled throughout my life to navigate academia as a queer outsider. This makes me an especially passionate mentor for students and junior colleagues from marginalized backgrounds.