People

Jenna Burrell is a Professor in the School of Information at UC Berkeley and co-director of AFOG. Her research focuses on how marginalized communities adapt digital technologies to meet their needs and to pursue their goals and ideals. Burrell is the author of Invisible Users: Youth in the Internet Cafes of Urban Ghana (The MIT Press) and is currently working on a second book about rural communities that host critical Internet infrastructure such as fiber optic cables and data centers. She earned a PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics and a BA in Computer Science from Cornell University.

Joshua Blumenstock is an Assistant Professor at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information, and the Director of the Data-Intensive Development Lab. His research lies at the intersection of machine learning and development economics, and focuses on using novel data and methods to better understand the causes and consequences of global poverty. At Berkeley, Joshua teaches courses in machine learning and data-intensive development. Previously, Joshua was on the faculty at the University of Washington, where he founded and co-directed the Data Science and Analytics Lab, and led the school’s Data for Social Good initiative. He has a Ph.D. in Information Science and a M.A. in Economics from U.C. Berkeley, and Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Physics from Wesleyan University. He is a recipient of the Intel Faculty Early Career Honor, a Gates Millennium Grand Challenge award, a Google Faculty Research Award, and is a former fellow of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation and the Harvard Institutes of Medicine.

I am a Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley and an associate fellow of the Max Plack-Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (Maxpo). A comparative sociologist by training and taste, I am interested in national variations in knowledge and practice. My first book, Economists and Societies (Princeton University Press 2009), explored the distinctive character of the discipline and profession of economics in three countries. A second book, The Ordinal Society (with Kieran Healy), is under contract. This book investigates new forms of social stratification and morality in the digital economy. Other recent research focuses on the valuation of nature in comparative perspective; the moral regulation of states; the comparative study of political organization (with Evan Schofer and Brian Lande); the microsociology of courtroom exchanges (with Roi Livne); the sociology of economics, with Etienne Ollion and Yann Algan, and with Rakesh Khurana; the politics of wine classifications in France and the United States (with Rebecca Elliott and Olivier Jacquet).

My mission is to build theory and tools that make the practice of machine learning across science and industry more robust, reliable, and aligned with societal values.

Professor Sonia Katyal’s award winning scholarly work focuses on the intersection of technology, intellectual property, and civil rights (including antidiscrimination, privacy, and freedom of speech).

Prof. Katyal’s current projects focus on the intersection between internet access and civil/human rights, with a special emphasis on the right to information; artificial intelligence and discrimination; trademarks and advertising; source code and the impact of trade secrecy; and a variety of projects on the intersection between gender and the commons. As a member of the university-wide Haas LGBT Cluster, Professor Katyal also works on matters regarding law, gender and sexuality.

Professor Katyal’s recent publications include The Numerus Clausus of Sex, in the University of Chicago Law Review; Technoheritage, in the California Law Review; Rethinking Private Accountability in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, in the UCLA Law Review; The Paradox of Source Code Secrecy, in the Cornell Law Review (forthcoming); Transparenthood in the Michigan Law Review (with Ilona Turner) (forthcoming); and Platform Law and the Brand Enterprise in the Berkeley Journal of Law and Technology (with Leah Chan Grinvald).

Katyal’s past projects have studied the relationship between informational privacy and copyright enforcement; the impact of advertising, branding and trademarks on freedom of expression; and issues relating to art and cultural property, focusing on new technologies and the role of museums in the United States and abroad.

Professor Katyal is the co-author of Property Outlaws (Yale University Press, 2010) (with Eduardo M. Peñalver), which studies the intersection between civil disobedience and innovation in property and intellectual property frameworks. Professor Katyal has won several awards for her work, including an honorable mention in the American Association of Law Schools Scholarly Papers Competition, a Yale Cybercrime Award, and twice received a Dukeminier Award from the Williams Project at UCLA for her writing on gender and sexuality.

She has previously published with a variety of law reviews, including the Yale Law Journal, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Washington Law Review, Texas Law Review, and the UCLA Law Review, in addition to a variety of other publications, including the New York Times, the Brooklyn Rail, Washington Post, CNN, Boston Globe’s Ideas section, Los Angeles Times, Slate, Findlaw, and the National Law Journal. Katyal is also the first law professor to receive a grant through The Creative Capital/ Warhol Foundation for her forthcoming book, Contrabrand, which studies the relationship between art, advertising and trademark and copyright law.

In March of 2016, Katyal was selected by U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker to be part of the inaugural U.S. Commerce Department’s Digital Economy Board of Advisors. Katyal also serves as an Affiliate Scholar at Stanford Law’s Center for Internet and Society, and is a founding advisor to the Women in Technology Law organization. She also serves on the Executive Committee for the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), on the Advisory Board for Media Studies at UC Berkeley, and on the Advisory Board of the CITRIS Policy Lab.

Before entering academia, Professor Katyal was an associate specializing in intellectual property litigation in the San Francisco office of Covington & Burling. Professor Katyal also clerked for the Honorable Carlos Moreno (later a California Supreme Court Justice) in the Central District of California and the Honorable Dorothy Nelson in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

I study computing infrastructures and their relationship to work, labor, and expertise.

Morgan G. Ames is an Assistant Adjunct Professor in the School of Information and Interim Associate Director of Research for the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society at the University of California, Berkeley. Morgan’s research explores the role of utopianism in the technology world, and the imaginary of the “technical child” as fertile ground for this utopianism. Based on eight years of archival and ethnographic research, she is finishing a book manuscript on One Laptop per Child which explores the motivations behind the project and the cultural politics of a model site in Paraguay.

Morgan was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Intel Science and Technology Center for Social Computing at the University of California, Irvine, working with Paul Dourish. Morgan’s PhD is in communication (with a minor in anthropology) from Stanford, where her dissertation won the Nathan Maccoby Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2013. She also has a B.A. in computer science and M.S. in information science, both from the University of California, Berkeley. See http://bio.morganya.org for more.

Michael Carl Tschantz received a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2012 and a Sc.B. from Brown University in 2005, both in Computer Science. Before becoming a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in 2014, he did two years of postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. He uses the models of artificial intelligence and statistics to solve the problems of privacy and security. His interests also include experimental design, formal methods, and logics. His current research includes automating information flow experiments, circumventing censorship, and securing machine learning. His dissertation formalized and operationalized what it means to use information for a purpose.

Andrew Smart is a researcher at Google in the Trust & Safety organization, working on algorithmic fairness, opacity and accountability. His research at Google is on internal ethical audits of machine learning systems, causality in machine learning and understanding structural vulnerability in society. His background is in philosophy, anthropology and cognitive neuroscience. He worked on the neuroscience of language at NYU. He was then a research scientist at Honeywell Aerospace working on machine learning for neurotechnology as well as aviation human factors. He was a Principal Research Scientist at Novartis in Basel, Switzterland working on connected medical devices and machine learning in clinical applications. Prior to joining Google he was a researcher at Twitter working on misinformation.

Stuart Geiger is a Staff Ethnographer & Principal Investigator at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science at UC-Berkeley, where he studies various topics about the infrastructures and institutions that support the production of knowledge. His Ph.D research at the UC-Berkeley School of Information investigated the role of automation in the governance and operation of Wikipedia and Twitter. He has studied topics including moderation and quality control processes, human-in-the-loop decision making, newcomer socialization, cooperation and conflict around automation, the roles of support staff and technicians, and bias, diversity, and inclusion. He uses ethnographic, historical, qualitative, quantitative, and computational methods in his research, which is grounded in the fields of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Science and Technology Studies, and communication and new media studies.

Madeleine is a Senior Research Scientist at Google. Previously she led the AI on the Ground Initiative at Data & Society, where she and her team investigate the promises and risks of integrating AI technologies into society. Through human-centered and ethnographic research, AI on the Ground sheds light on the consequences of deploying AI systems beyond the research lab, examining who benefits, who is harmed, and who is accountable. The initiative’s work has focused on how organizations grapple with the challenges and opportunities of AI, from changing work practices and responsibilities to new ethics practices and forms of AI governance.As a researcher and anthropologist, Madeleine has worked to reframe debates about the ethical design, use, and governance of AI systems. She has conducted field work across varied industries and communities, ranging from the Air Force, the driverless car industry, and commercial aviation to precision agriculture and emergency healthcare. Her research has been published and cited in scholarly journals as well as publications including The New York Times, Slate, The Guardian, Vice, and USA Today. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University and an S.M. in Comparative Media Studies from MIT.

David Robinson is a Visiting Scientist in the AI Policy and Practice Initiative, in Cornell's College of Computing and Information Science. Earlier in his career, he cofounded Upturn, an NGO that advances equity and justice in the design, governance, and use of digital technology.

Rebecca Fan is a social scientist with an interdisciplinary background (anthropology, international human rights law and politics, socio-legal studies). She is currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, & Society (CSTMS). Prior to completing her PhD, she worked for a number of human rights organizations (e.g., Amnesty International) and contributed to advocacy work at regional and global forums. Her dissertation brings together fieldwork at the United Nations and participatory action research to investigate what she identifies as the epistemological struggle of governance via regime analysis and institutional studies. Continuing her engagement with global civil society, she currently serves on the Commission on Environmental Economic and Social Policy (CEESP, which is one of the 6 Commissions of the International Union for Conservation of Nature) as a contributing member. When time permits, she plays Indonesian gamelan music and enjoys hiking and floral arrangements.

Kweku Opoku-Agyemang is an (honorary) postdoctoral research fellow with the Center for Effective Global Action at UC Berkeley. His research interests span development economics, industrial organization, research transparency, ethics and technological impacts. He is an author of the book Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World, published by the University of California Press in 2016. He was previously a Research Associate in Human-Computer Interaction and Social Computing at Cornell Tech.My research focuses on how social science research can become more transparent with the aid of computational tools and on relevant challenges. I am also interested in the causes and consequences of algorithmic bias in the both developed and developing countries as well as the potential role of industrial organization in promoting algorithmic fairness in firms that focus on artificial intelligence.

David Platzer is a recent graduate of the anthropology program at Johns Hopkins and is currently a Berggruen Institute Transformations of the Human research fellow at UC Berkley’s Center for New Media. His dissertation research focused on neurodiversity employment initiatives in the tech industry, while his current research investigates the existential risk movement in its intersection with value-alignment in AI development.

I’ve always considered myself a tech-focused person, so throughout my education, I’ve studied digital technologies to keep things interesting. I completed my MA and PhD in Communication Arts & Sciences at Penn State and most recently worked at University of the Pacific. I consider myself an interdisciplinary scholar with a wide range of interests in algorithms, digital platforms, gaming, and social justice. I’m a first-gen student, part of the federal McNair Scholars program to help underserved students earn graduate degrees. I’m excited to work with AFOG and continue my research in algorithmic rhetoric!

Personally, I’m a gamer of various sorts. I play a variety of video games (and sometimes stream on Twitch). I’ve also DM’d for D&D campaigns for the past few years and often play in other campaigns. Outdoors, I love hiking, biking, and soccer. I also love going for walks with my dog, Jessie, and my partner, Judi. I’ve lived in Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and California, so I have many thoughts on the regions of the US. I’m elated to work in the Bay Area, which I hope will be the best place I have lived!

Zoe Kahn is a PhD student at the UC Berkeley School of Information where she collaborates with data scientists, computer scientists, and designers to understand how technologies impact people and society, with a particular interest in AI and ethics, algorithmic decision making, and responsible innovation. As a qualitative researcher, Zoe ask questions of people and data that surface rich and actionable insights. Zoe brings an interdisciplinary background to her work that blends sociology, technology, law, and policy. She received her B.A. summa cum laude in Sociology from New York University in 2014. She is joint-fellow at the Center for Technology, Society and Policy, Center for Long-Term Cyber Security, and Algorithmic Fairness and Opacity Working Group at UC Berkeley.

Zoe’s current project with four MIMS students, Coordinated Entry System Research and Development for a Continuum of Care in Northern California, is jointly-funded by the Center for Center for Technology, Society and Policy, Center for Long-Term Cyber Security, and Algorithmic Fairness and Opacity Working Group at UC Berkeley.

Shazeda is a third-year Ph.D. student at the I School. She has worked as a researcher for the Council on Foreign Relations, Asia Society, the U.S. Naval War College, Citizen Lab, Ranking Digital Rights, and the Mercator Institute for China Studies. Her research focuses on China’s social credit system, information technology policy, and role in setting norms of global Internet governance.

After an MS in Data Science, I came to the ISchool to pursue transdisplinary interests related to information technologies. My research focusses on computational propaganda and algorithmic fairness.Youtube said they would recommend less conspiratorial content through their Autoplay algorithm. Can they be held accountable for this, despite the opacity of their system? One of my project is to measure if this trend is actually changing.I am also in the process of publishing a paper on the limits and potential mitigations of the PSA, a software used for pre-trial risk-assessement. Fairness and transparency are at the core of the value tussles.

I am an interdisciplinary candidate at UC Berkeley, affiliated with the Center for Human-Compatible AI. My prior training in philosophy, sociology, and political theory has led me to study the various technical and organizational dilemmas that emerge when experts use machine learning to aid decision-making. In my spare time I enjoy sailing and creative writing.

Daniel Griffin is a doctoral student at the School of Information at UC Berkeley. His research interests center on intersections between information and values and power, looking at freedom and control in information systems. He is a co-director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Technology, Society & Policy and a commissioner on the City of Berkeley’s Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. Prior to entering the doctoral program, he completed the Master of Information Management and Systems program, also at the School of Information. Before graduate school he served as an intelligence analyst in the US Army. As an undergraduate, he studied philosophy at Whitworth University.

After previously working in program management at the Participatory Culture Foundation and the Barnard Center for Research on Women, I now study education, information systems, culture, and inequality here at the I School. I am a Fellow with the Center for Technology, Society, and Policy and a Research Grantee of the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity on several collaborative projects.

Nitin Kohli is a PhD student at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, working under Deirdre Mulligan. His research examines privacy, security, and fairness in algorithmic systems from technical and legal perspectives. On the technical side, Nitin employs theoretical and computational techniques to construct algorithmic mechanisms with such properties. On the legal side, Nitin explores institutional and organizational mechanisms to protect these values by examining the incentive structures and power dynamics that govern these environments. His work draws upon mathematics, statistics, computer science, economics, and law.Prior to his PhD work, Nitin worked both as a data scientist in industry and as an academic. Within industry, Nitin developed machine learning and natural language processing algorithms to identify occurrences and locations of future risk in healthcare settings. Within academia, Nitin worked as an adjunct instructor and as a summer lecturer at UC Berkeley, teaching introductory and advanced courses in probability, statistics, and game theory. Nitin holds a Master’s degree in Information and Data Science from Berkeley’s School of Information, and a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Statistics, where he received departmental honors in statistics for his work in stochastic modeling and game theory.

Andrew Chong is a PhD student at the UC Berkeley School of Information, where his research focuses on how the use of algorithms influences market competition and outcomes. Previously, Andrew worked at the National Bureau of Economic Research examining the impact of behavioral interventions in healthcare and consumer finance. He also has experience developing and implementing pricing models for prescription health insurance (PicWell), and developing dashboards for city governments (with Accela and Civic Insight).

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum sagittis, odio consectetur euismod tempus, elit urna dictum ipsum, vel molestie diam ex tempus lacus. Nulla sagittis, est sed molestie fringilla, erat dolor eleifend arcu, sit amet scelerisque nisl nisl a arcu. Morbi condimentum ex elementum dapibus fermentum. Praesent tristique, dui bibendum gravida pretium, ipsum ipsum viverra tellus, ultrices blandit est nunc quis augue. Praesent diam justo, consectetur non gravida sit amet, eleifend ac enim. Integer aliquet elit vitae tortor mattis sollicitudin. Nullam interdum velit quis gravida laoreet. Donec pretium ipsum et laoreet pharetra. Integer lacinia lobortis risus, efficitur vehicula orci ultrices quis. Pellentesque faucibus, lectus id gravida vehicula, arcu felis scelerisque neque, sed pharetra urna purus at magna. Sed scelerisque ornare tortor a pretium. Phasellus vel dapibus enim. Maecenas maximus quis ligula eget vehicula. Donec vel erat non quam blandit mattis.

Renata is a JD / PhD candidate at Berkeley, where her dissertation focuses on the impact of SESTA / FOSTA on content moderation. She is trained in STS and computational social science. Renata has interned at Twitter, Facebook, and the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law.

I'm a PhD student at the UC Berkeley School of Information where I am advised by Dr. Jenna Burrell. My current research focuses on how violence is perpetuated through information infrastructures and algorithmic logics. I use critical race theory and black feminist epistemology in understanding the implications of technology on society.

Liza is a PhD student at the UC Berkeley School of Information, advised by Dr. Niloufar Salehi. She is interested in human-computer interaction, social computing, virtual communities, and online harms. She is a joint CTSP/AFOG fellow for the 2021 calendar year. Previously, she graduated with a BA in Computer Science and Mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis.

Tonya Nguyen is a Ph.D. student at the UC Berkeley School of Information. Her work centers on human-computer interaction (HCI), social computing, and human-centered AI. She builds computational social systems by collaborating with communities, using ethnography, and conducting controlled experiments. In the past, she worked on digital fabrication projects, built CSCW tools for online collaboration, and built online experiments to study team viability and fracture. She received her in B.A in Interdisciplinary Studies (Computer Science, Design Innovation, and Critical Theory) from UC Berkeley.

Jeremy Gordon is a PhD student at Berkeley's School of Information where he conducts research at the BioSense lab and is advised by John Chuang. He is a computational cognitive scientist investigating the role of embodied simulation, imagination, and prospection as part of decision-making processes across multiple timescales. He uses emerging technologies like virtual reality and biosensing devices to investigate human behavior in the context of uncertainty, as well as to lend insight into critical ethical questions about the use and privacy implications of such technologies. Jeremy is also a full stack developer and product designer, and has extensive experience working with NGOs, social enterprises and government agencies in emerging markets. Before returning to the academic world, Jeremy was based in Nairobi where he founded Echo Mobile, a mobile messaging platform allowing businesses and organizations to communicate with and better understand the people they work with. Jeremy graduated from Stanford University where he received dual degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Political Science.