Research Group Participants
Dr. Annie I. Antón (Organizing Committee Member) is a Professor in (and former chair of) the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. She has served the national defense and intelligence communities in a number of roles since being selected for the IDA/DARPA Defense Science Study Group in 2005-2006. Her current research focuses on the specification of complete, correct behavior of software systems that must comply with federal privacy and security regulations, as well as the selection of sensors in designing autonomous systems to preserve privacy. In 2016, she was appointed by President Barack Obama to the 12-person bi-partisan Commission on Enhancing Cybersecurity for the Nation. Antón currently serves on various boards, including the Institute for Defense Analysis Board of Trustees and the Future of Privacy Forum Advisory Board.
Betsy Beaumon is a social entrepreneur, advisor, author, and consultant. She is the former CEO of Benetech, and advocates for ethical and inclusive technology, where all devices, content, and algorithms are Born Accessible.
Ezekiel Dixon-Román is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. His research seeks to make cultural and critical theoretical interventions toward rethinking and reconceptualizing the technologies and practices of quantification as mediums and agencies of systems of sociopolitical relations whereby race and other assemblages of difference are byproducts. He is the author of Inheriting Possibility: Social Reproduction & Quantification in Education (2017, University of Minnesota Press).
Shayan Doroudi is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Education. His research is focused on educational data science, educational technology, and the learning sciences, and his work draws inspiration from the histories of these fields. He is broadly interested in what he calls the foundations of learning about learning and how they relate to the design of socio-technical systems that improve learning. He has an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Rodrigo Ferreira (Organizing Committee Member) is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Computer Science at Rice University. His teaching and research on ethics, technology, and society focus specifically on questions of algorithmic bias, digital labor, and social/political networks. Together with Dr. Moshe Vardi, Rodrigo has developed “Deep Tech Ethics” as an approach to teaching ethics in computer science that connects contemporary research in technology and ethics with historical insights from critical theory, phenomenology, and STS. Rodrigo has a BA in Philosophy (with honors), a MA in Humanities and Social Thought, and a Ph.D. in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University and recently translated Modernity and Whiteness, the first full-length manuscript by late Mexican-Ecuadorian philosopher Bolivar Echeverría to be available in English (Polity 2019).
Kathi Fletcher (Organizing Committee Member) is the Director of Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics for OpenStax at Rice University, overseeing strategy for equitable product development and an equitable workplace environment. Before that, she was the Director of Technology overseeing product, software development and user experience. OpenStax has a library of over 40 high quality, open college level and high school textbooks used by over 4 million students each semester, and educational technology to help faculty teach and students learn. Kathi has a research master’s degree in computer science, has taught computer engineering and computer architecture giving her empathy for faculty and students, and she had a Fellowship from the Shuttleworth Foundation from 2011-2014 to foster the use of and adaptation of open education resources. Her interests include product usability, ethical and equitable data, technology and artificial intelligence, and how people learn.
Phillip Grimaldi is a cognitive scientist by training, and he specializes in conducting learning research within educational technology environments. Phillip conducts research in a wide range of environments, including small 1:1 laboratory studies, web-based experiments, large-scale classroom studies (greater than 2,000 students), and large-scale learning platforms. He holds a Ph.D. from Purdue University and a Bachelor’s in Psychology from Kent State University.
Catherine (Cat) Hicks is a sharply skilled leader in behavioral science and data, with deep domain expertise in how people learn and thrive and how to measure it. She’s followed her love for complex behavior through a Ph.D. in experimental psychology, where Catherine learned to design rigorous experiments and fell in love with stats and measurement. She’s built research on employee learning and development at Google, co-founded a tech startup that made software for teams collaborating on code, and collaborated with large companies, tiny nonprofits and political campaigns. She’s led research in a wide variety of settings: embedded cognitive science research on problem-solving and learning, foundational experimental psychology research on cross-cultural environments for learning, and applied product development as an entrepreneur-scientist. Catherine is passionate about learning equity, access to opportunity, and how we make visible the invisible effort of people operating under extraordinary adversity. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at San Diego and a Bachelor’s in Psychology from The University of Dallas.
Wayne Holmes (Ph.D., University of Oxford) is a learning science and innovation researcher who teaches at University College London and is a consultant on Artificial Intelligence and education for UNESCO. His publications include “Ethics of AI in Education: Towards a Community-Wide Framework” (2021) and UNESCO’s “AI and Education: Guidance for Policy-makers” (2021).
Nina Huntemann is the Vice President of Learning at edX, where she oversees the instructional and pedagogical strategy of edX to improve outcomes for 37 million learners, achieve the programmatic goals of edX’s 240+ partner members, and maximize the capabilities of the Open edX platform. Prior to joining edX, she was a tenured professor at Suffolk University in Boston with over 15 years of teaching, program administration and faculty development experience.
Klara Jelinkova (Organizing Committee Member) is the Vice President for International Operations and IT at Rice University. She is responsible for strategic technology issues ranging from governance, policy and resource allocation to protocol and organization. She represents the university’s information technology interests nationally and internationally. She also leads efforts for a seamless connection to our campus through technology as well as other operational issues. Prior to joining Rice in 2015, Klara was the Sr. Associate Vice President and Chief Information Technology Officer at the University of Chicago. While there, she restructured and realigned the IT function and was responsible for a number of system implementations and technology upgrades. She supported the University of Chicago’s global aspirations by overseeing the technology implementation in their centers overseas. Klara is an active member of several regional and national higher education organizations. She also serves on several industry advisory boards. Klara is also a lead Principal Investigator (PI) for several National Science Foundation (NSF) grants.
Rene Kizilcec is an Assistant Professor of Information Science, graduate field member in Communication and Physics, and founding director of the Future of Learning Lab at Cornell University. Kizilcec’s research is on the use and impact of technology in formal and informal learning environments (college classes, online degree programs, mobile learning, professional development, MOOCs, and middle/high school classrooms, etc.) and scalable interventions to broaden participation and reduce achievement gaps.
Michael Madaio is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research, NYC, in the FATE (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics in AI) research group. His research takes a human-centered approach to design AI systems with fairness and equity in mind. He completed his Ph.D. at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University where he was an IES-funded Interdisciplinary Education Research fellow; previously, he completed a Masters in Education at the University of Maryland and was a public-school teacher.
Jyoti Malhan (Organizing Committee Member) works as a Director in the Office of Strategy and Innovation in the Houston Independent School District. She oversees computer science as well as several special projects and initiatives for the division. In the past, she served as the founding principal of Baylor College of Medicine Academy (BCMA) at James D Ryan Middle School which opened in August 2013. The school is in top 25% of all schools in the state of Texas and 1 of 4 middle schools in Houston ISD to receive all distinctions every year on the state assessments. In 2011, Jyoti co-founded the Young Women’s College Preparatory Academy and served as the Dean of Instruction there for two years. Both schools have been recognized as exemplary magnet programs and have attracted local, state and national attention as model schools to replicate. Jyoti is the first-ever public-school educator to receive an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities in Medicine from Baylor College of Medicine in May 2017. She has more than two decades of experience as an educator in private and public schools. She has a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from Texas A&M University with an emphasis in Urban Education.
Anne Margulies is the former VP/CIO of Harvard University and currently serves on the boards of the Advanced Cybersecurity Center, the Massachusetts Governor’s Cybersecurity Advisory Board and 2 corporations: Henry Schein, Inc and SomaLogic.
Danielle S. McNamara is a Professor of Psychology in the Psychology Department at Arizona State University. She has published over 450 scholarly works (books, journal articles, chapters, proceedings) on topics related to educational technologies (see adaptiveliteracy.com), game-based learning, reading comprehension, writing, text and learning analytics, and natural language processing (see soletlab.asu.edu). Dr. McNamara has served as an associate editor for five academic journals and currently serves as the founding editor of APA’s Technology, Mind, and Behavior (/tmb.apaopen.org).
Tom Moule has served as Executive Lead at The Institute for Ethical AI in Education, which published The Ethical Framework for AI in Education in March 2021; he has worked for leading education technology company, CENTURY Tech; and Tom is also the author of Cracking Social Mobility: how AI and other innovations can help to level the playing field (being published by The University of Buckingham Press in August 2021). Tom started his career as a teacher and has taught science and math primarily in schools in disadvantaged areas.
Justin Reich is an assistant professor of digital media in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing department at MIT and the director of the Teaching Systems Lab. He is the author of Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education and the host of the TeachLab Podcast. He earned his doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and was the Richard L. Menschel HarvardX Research Fellow. He is a past Fellow at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society. His writings have been published in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other scholarly journals and public venues.
Juan Pablo Sarmiento is an educational researcher, film editor, and educator. He has taught courses on Creativity, Design Thinking, Visual Communication, and Film at PUC-Chile. He is a doctoral student at NYU Steinhardt’s Educational Communications program focusing on the study of creativity, and participatory design for Learning Analytics. He is a researcher at the LEARN research network, participating in projects for a student-facing dashboard, and on skill-building around faculty-facing learning analytics. He is also involved in research and development projects at NYU’s Office of Student Success, researching Leave of Absence students and developing content to improve student’s social-emotional skills. He has also worked as a video ethnographer and documentarian, both in research and film projects.
Julia Stoyanovich is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, and of Data Science at New York University (NYU), where she also directs the Center for Responsible AI at NYU, a hub for interdisciplinary research, public education, and advocacy that aims to make responsible AI synonymous with AI. Julia’s research focuses on responsible data management and analysis: on operationalizing fairness, diversity, transparency, and data protection in all stages of the data science lifecycle. She established the Data, Responsibly consortium and served on the New York City Automated Decision Systems Task Force, by appointment from Mayor Bill de Blasio. Julia developed and has been teaching courses on Responsible Data Science at NYU, and is a co-creator of an award-winning comic book series on this topic. Julia also works on the management and analysis of preference data, and on querying large evolving graphs. She holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Columbia University, and a B.S. in Computer Science and in Mathematics & Statistics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Julia is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award and of an NSF/CRA CI Fellowship.
Moshe Y. Vardi (Organizing Committee Member) is University Professor and the Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University, where he is leading an Initiative on Technology, Culture, and Society. He is also a Faculty Scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. Vardi’s research interests focus on automated reasoning, a branch of Artificial Intelligence with broad applications to computer science. In addition, he is studying adverse societal consequences of technology.
Craig Watkins is the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. An internationally recognized expert in media, Watkins is the author of six books exploring young people’s engagement with media and technology. Watkins is the founding director of the Institute for Media Innovation, a boutique hub for research and design located in the Moody College of Communication and the Director of UT’s Good Systems Racial Justice Research Focus Area (RFA). The RFA brings together researchers, industry, government, and other stakeholders to explore the equity implications of data-based systems like artificial intelligence.
Alyssa Friend Wise is Associate Professor of Learning Sciences & Educational Technology in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University and the Director of LEARN, NYU’s university-wide Learning Analytics Research Network. Her work is widely recognized for its contributions to the learning sciences and learning analytics literatures, particularly in its focus on the human practices of using data to inform teaching and learning. Dr. Wise is an Editor in Chief of the Journal of Learning Analytics and a Program Chair for the upcoming 2022 edition of the International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge (LAK22).
Beverly Park Woolf, Ph.D., Ed.D., is a Research Professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences, UMass-Amherst. She develops intelligent tutors that model a student’s affective and cognitive characteristics and combine an analysis of learning with artificial intelligence, network technology and multimedia. These tutors represent the knowledge taught, recognize learners’ skills and behavior, use sensors and machine learning to model student affect, and adapt problems and messages to an individual student’s needs. Some tutors enable students to pass standard exams at a 10-15% higher rate and one system is used by more than 150,000 students per semester across hundreds of colleges. Dr. Woolf published the book Building Intelligent Interactive Tutors along with over 250 articles.
Renzhe Yu is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Irvine and previously Social Good fellows at the Alan Turing Institute and IBM Research. His research aims to understand and support the success and well-being of young adults in college through large-scale behavioral, textual and institutional analytics, as well as the fairness and equity of such processes.