The GEM Fellowship, a program of the National GEM Consortium, supports graduate students in STEM by combining financial support for their graduate studies with paid summer internships at industry partners. Adobe has been a corporate partner in the GEM program since 2012, and each summer Adobe Research hosts a cohort of GEM Fellows to work on cutting-edge problems alongside researchers and engineers. Over the years, Adobe has sponsored more than 100 GEM Fellows. Through this partnership, Adobe invests in building talent pipelines, offers professional development and mentoring, and sometimes hires former GEM Fellows as full-time staff.

This summer, Adobe Research welcomed 14 GEM fellow interns whose projects tackled big questions in technology: from reducing bias in AI systems to rethinking how personas are designed and how interfaces are judged. Three of the interns— Faith Baca, Christina Chance, and Reuben Luera— each arrived with different backgrounds and research interests, but found common ground in the mentorship, collaboration, and confidence they built over the course of the internship. 

Faith Baca building equitable AI

When Faith Baca first heard about the GEM Fellowship, it was almost by chance. A peer mentioned it while she was weighing the decision between getting a job in industry or attending grad school. At the time, she tucked the idea away. Months later, when it came time to apply for graduate programs, Faith applied “on a whim.” To her surprise, she was accepted.

That moment, she says, set her on a path that led her to Adobe Research— and to a summer that combined her passions for art, technology, and inclusion in AI.

Baca describes herself as “an artist at heart,” with a lifelong love for drawing, painting, and photography. That creative background made Adobe’s culture especially appealing to her, since she wanted to work in an environment that valued imagination as much as innovation.

Once she arrived, her project focused on another passion: social impact. She helped build a large-scale dataset to benchmark computer vision models, with the aim of making sure AI systems don’t reinforce bias by consistently favoring certain groups. “If you prompt an AI to generate an image of a doctor, it might default to a light-skinned man. That doesn’t reflect reality, and it’s harmful when people don’t see themselves represented,” Baca says.

For Baca, the project proved both challenging and transformative. It pushed her to think critically about issues she hadn’t considered before, from the details of the data collection process to the broader question of representation in computer vision and AI. The experience also gave her a glimpse of the kind of work she hopes to pursue in her PhD at the University of Southern California: research that helps move the field toward less-biased AI systems.

Unlike her previous roles, this internship gave her true ownership of the process, requiring her to make key decisions about how the work unfolded. While the responsibility was daunting, she found it equally rewarding and fun.

She credits her mentor, Luis Figueroa with helping her grow into that leadership role. Figueroa is a Research Engineer at Adobe Research, and he himself came to Adobe as a GEM Fellow intern, completing internships in 2019 and 2020 before joining full time.

“Luis really saw me from day one as someone who had potential… he knew exactly how to guide me in a way that was supportive and kind and understanding, but also really pushed me.”

Christina Chance creating inclusive personas

For Christina Chance, a PhD student at UCLA, GEM also opened the door to Adobe Research, where she spent the summer challenging assumptions embedded in AI systems. Her internship project focused on “surprising personas” for evaluating agentic systems like chatbots.

Traditional personas, she explains, are often reductive and stereotype-driven. “A lot of LLMs assume all Black people live in Atlanta— that’s just not true,” she says. Chance’s research instead creates personas that break stereotypes. These profiles allow AI systems to be tested against more diverse experiences.

The work connects directly to her dissertation on content moderation systems that serve community-specific needs. By designing more inclusive personas, she hopes to create fairer systems that reflect the complexity of people’s lived experiences.

Mentorship has been a defining part of her internship. Her advisor helped her refine the project’s scope while keeping the focus on impact. “I came in wanting to fight bias in personas, and together we shaped that into something that aligns with Adobe’s needs,” Chance says.

She’s also learned the importance of following up and turning hallway conversations into collaborations.

“I had my intern inception talk, and someone gave me feedback about some language models I was using. I followed up, and that actually helped me make the project stronger,” she explains.

For Chance, mentorship and community were just as important as research. “The best advice I can give to future interns is to talk to people. Keep your door open, go to events, build your network. At Adobe, you’re surrounded by brilliant people who want to help you succeed.”

Reuben Luera’s path from UX to researcher

When Reuben Luera joined Adobe Research as a GEM fellow intern, he had no academic research experience. His background was in UX design. But through GEM, he was matched with Adobe and paired with mentor Ryan Rossi, who helped Luera learn to conduct research “basically from zero.”

That investment paid off. Within a year, Luera co-authored a paper published in an HCI journal and presented his work at The Web Conference in Sydney, Australia. “A couple years ago, I never would have imagined presenting research to an international audience,” he says. “It was definitely a surreal experience.”

This summer, his research built on that foundation. He explored “AI as a judge”—testing whether AI can evaluate user interface designs the way humans do. By comparing human feedback with AI-generated judgments, his project could one day streamline design evaluation at scale.

For Luera, the GEM fellowship has given him the confidence to step into spaces he once avoided. “Last year, I tried to hide in the shadows or hope nobody talked to me about my research, just because I didn’t know if I was going to answer the questions correctly,” Luera says. “But my second year has been almost completely different. I love talking about my research this year— I have a lot more confidence in what I’m talking about.”

GEM cultivates collaboration and growth among interns

Beyond the research, all three fellows emphasized the community that GEM fosters. Luera notes that GEM interns often grabbed lunch together, building friendships alongside their projects. Chance stressed the value of keeping doors open, going to events, and learning from conversations with peers and mentors. Baca recalls how meaningful it’s been to connect with other GEM fellow interns across Adobe.

“For future interns: really take time to develop those connections. It’s important to focus on your research, but it’s also equally as important to develop relationships with people and have fun.” Baca says.

Together, their stories highlight what GEM makes possible: opening doors for students to pursue technical innovation, encouraging mentorship and growth, and creating research that reflects the people it serves.

Interested in the GEM Fellowship and a future internship at Adobe Research? Applications are open now until November 14th! Learn more about Adobe’s research internship opportunities for 2026 at research.adobe.com/careers/internships and explore the GEM Fellowship at gemfellowship.org.