Research

My research lies at the intersection of data science, animal welfare science, and AI bias. As a PhD candidate at the UBC Animal Welfare Program, and a collaborator at the UBC TrustML Research Cluster, I contribute to building reliable, secure, explainable, and ethical AI systems. My previous research focused on advancing automated methods for behavior monitoring, redefining dominance hierarchy calculations, creating novel approaches for lameness detection, and understanding behavioral baselines for individual animals from sensor data. Currently, my work explores the representation bias of livestock farming in generative AI.

Publications

The erasure of intensive livestock farming in text-to-image generative AI

Sheng, K., Tuyttens, F.A.M., von Keyserlingk, M.A.G.

ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) (2025)

Paper Code

Redefining Lameness Assessment: Constructing Lameness Hierarchy using Crowd-Sourced Data

Sheng, K., Foris, B., von Keyserlingk, M.A.G., Timbers, T.A., Cabrera, V., Weary, D.M.

Computers and Electronics in Agriculture (2025)

Paper Code

Redefining dominance calculation: Increased competition flattens the dominance hierarchy in dairy cows

Sheng, K., Foris, B., Krahn, J., Weary, D.M., von Keyserlingk, M.A.G.

Journal of Dairy Science, 107(9): 7286-7298 (2024)

Paper Code

Crowd sourcing remote comparative lameness assessments for dairy cattle

Sheng, K., Foris, B., von Keyserlingk, M.A.G., Gardenier, J., Clark, C., Weary, D.M.

Journal of Dairy Science, 106(8): 5715-5722 (2023)

Paper

AI for One Welfare: the role of animal welfare scientists in developing valid and ethical AI-based welfare assessment tools

Foris, B., Sheng, K., Dürnberger, C., Oczak, M., Rault, J.L.

Frontiers in Veterinary Science (2025)

Paper

Automated, longitudinal measures of drinking behavior provide insights into the social hierarchy in dairy cows

Foris, B., Vandresen, B., Sheng, K., Krahn, J., Weary, D.M., von Keyserlingk, M.A.G.

JDS Communications, 5(5): 411-415 (2024)

Paper

Effects of group size on agonistic interactions in dairy cows: a descriptive study

Krahn, J., Foris, B., Sheng, K., Weary, D.M., von Keyserlingk, M.A.G.

Animal, 18(3): 101083 (2024)

Paper

Research Interests