Vipin P. Veetil

Vipin is an economist with a PhD from George Mason University. He works in the area of monetary and macroeconomics. He currently works at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.

Nikita Sonavane (she/her)

Nikita Sonavane has worked as a legal researcher and an advocate for over three years. She is the co-founder of the Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project (CPAProject) a Bhopal based litigation and research intervention focused on building accountability against criminalisation of marginalised communities by the Police and the criminal justice system. Her writings have been at the intersection of policing, caste and digitisation of the criminal justice in India. Nikita has previously worked as a Research Associate with the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), Ahmedabad, on issues of local governance, forest rights, and gender in the Adivasi region of Dang in Gujarat. She graduated with a B.A. (Political Science) degree from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and an LL.B. degree from Government Law College, Mumbai in 2016. Nikita holds an LL.M in Law and Development degree from Azim Premji University (APU), Bangalore. Her writings have been published by the AI Now Institute at NYU, Indian Express, the Hindu, Caravan among others.

Palashi V (she/they)

Palashi is a PhD Candidate in Information Science at Cornell University. Her dissertation is an ethnography of locating caste and its relationship with gender in computing cultures of India and the Indian diaspora. Her project is a caste-critical analysis of upper-caste subjectivity in computing, specifically in women-in-technology initiatives, and how it shapes the experience of Dalit engineers. She is an engineer turned interdisciplinary scholar of the social and cultural worlds of computing at the intersection of Information Science, Anthropology, STS and Feminist Studies.

Her work has been published in CSCW, CHI, thewire.in, and other venues and has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, Cornell Institute of Social Sciences, Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Mellon Foundation and University of Siegen. She is a student and early-career representative of the Feminist Scholarship Division of the International Communication Association. She has a Bachelors in Technology in Information Communication Technology from DA-IICT, India. She has previously worked at a Big Four technology consulting firm and in organizations focused on feminist technologies in India. She tweets intermittently at @lapshiii.

Akhil Kang (he/they)

Akhil Kang is a Ph.D. candidate in Socio-cultural Anthropology at Cornell University. His Ph.D. project focuses on the anthropology of the elite. He is academically and politically interested in shifting the anthropological gaze away from lower caste individuals and understands victimhood and woundedness as articulated by upper caste individuals/savarnas. He is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of several fields including feminist and queer studies; affect and media studies, postcoloniality and biopolitics. He is currently conducting his fieldwork in parts of North India and his fieldwork is supported by the Wenner Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant.

Prior to enrolling at Cornell, Akhil received his B.A. LLB (Hons.) from NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, and is a registered Advocate with the Bar Council of Delhi. Born and raised in Jalandhar (Punjab, India), he has been involved in queer and anti-caste activism and human rights lawyering. He has worked on several projects including, the role of men and masculinity in child marriages in India (with AJWS), feminist law archiving (with McArthur Foundation), and understanding gender and the sexual in institutional student movements & political formations in India (with Ford Foundation). He writes about sex, desires and politics at https://www.desi-underground-gay.com/

Sara Beery (she/her/hers)

Sara Beery has always been passionate about the natural world, and she saw a need for technology-based approaches to conservation and sustainability challenges. This led her to pursue a PhD at Caltech, where her research focuses on computer vision for global-scale biodiversity monitoring. She works closely with Microsoft AI for Earth and Google Research to translate her work into usable tools. Sara’s experiences as a professional ballerina, a queer woman, and a nontraditional student have taught her the value of unique and diverse perspectives in the research community. She’s passionate about increasing diversity and inclusion in STEM through mentorship and outreach.

Luisa Ruge (she/her)

Animal & Human Centered Designer / PhD in Animal Computer Interaction

Luisa Ruge is Colombian-American user centered designer with over 15 years experience helping companies of all sizes across the Americas and Europe develop delightful product experiences. Some of her previous human-based work includes working at a Bogotá based company builder where she co-lead multidisciplinary teams in the design of start-ups for the Latin American market, collaborating with the US State Department and the James Beard Foundation in creating the exhibit strategy for the US Pavilion at ExpoMilan 2015, establishing the design team at an industry leading, US based, consumer goods company, being an adjunct design department faculty member at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and leading color, material, and finish strategy, and product development projects at a major global appliance company in both Europe, Australia, and the US.

Eight years ago, Luisa decided to pursue her goal of increasing animals' wellbeing through design by broadening her scope of the users she works with to include animals. Doing so has included her becoming a certified mobility assistance dog trainer, working at a dog day care, helping design the training facility for dogs who help veterans, and completing a PhD from the Open University in Animal Computer Interaction. Most recently she is an independent animal centered design consultant and the co-founder of Scout9, a company which aims to empower pet partners by helping them make better and more informed decisions on their dog's behalf .

Brian Aldridge

Clinical and Health Innovation Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine and Carle Illinois College of Medicine, UIUC, IL, USA.

Dr Brian Aldridge currently serves as a Clinical and Health Innovation Professor at the University of Illinois with a joint appointment between the College of Veterinary Medicine and Carle Illinois College of Medicine. He holds affiliate positions at the Institute of Genomic Biology, the National Center for Supercomputer Applications and the Center for Digital Agriculture. His scholarly efforts focus on animal health defense in young and growing animals with a particular interest in mucosal immunology, respiratory and gastrointestinal health, and the early detection of health failure. As a member of the University of Illinois AI FARMS team, Brian provides expertise and leadership in the area of detection and interpretation of host responses to health challenges. Through his clinical, research and educational outreach activities Brian maintains long term, productive relationships with partners throughout the veterinary and human health industries and focuses his discovery efforts on projects that can help transcribe clinical data into intelligence that informs effective management decision making.

Brian has used his passion for teaching and learning to assist in the development and implementation of high impact educational programs around the world. He has helped new veterinary and medical school curricular at institutions in California, Illinois, the United Kingdom, and south-east Asia, and received numerous teaching awards. He was the co-developer of a Massive Open Online Course entitled Sustainable Food Production Through Livestock Health Management which had over 20,000 participants from 100 countries, over 35% of which were from developing nations. He has also helped develop a series of online Continuing Education and Graduate learning programs at the iLearning Center at UIUC.

Michelle Lee Brown (she/her or they/them)

Michelle Lee Brown is the Assistant Professor of Indigenous Knowledge, Data Sovereignty, and Decolonization at Washington State University, in their Digital Technology and Culture Program. She is a recent Eastman Fellow at Dartmouth College in their department of Native American and Indigenous Studies, and recently completed her PhD in the Indigenous Politics and Futures Studies programs in the Political Science Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her work articulates Indigenous political praxis and futures through digital SF; she is currently working on a VR project on water, eels, and relationality, and a comic based on multiple levels of impostor syndrome. More about her practice and praxis can be found at www.michelleleebrown.com.

Euskalduna from Lapurdi (Biarritz/Miarritze Côte des Basques), she grew up on Wampanoag territories around Buzzards Bay and now lives on Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla Walla lands and waters. She strives to uphold her relational commitments to these communities and is grateful to be working with her fellow panelists to imagine and build otherwise.

Julia Ling (she/her)

Dr. Julia Ling is a tech lead on the Tidal project at X, the Moonshot Factory. She leads the software and machine learning team at Tidal, a project whose mission is to protect the ocean while feeding humanity sustainably. Prior to joining Tidal, Julia was the CTO at Citrine Informatics, a 70+ person start up in the Bay Area building an AI platform to accelerate new materials development. She's a recognized leader in applying machine learning to scientific applications. She holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and a Bachelors in Physics from Princeton University.

Naba Rizvi

Naba Rizvi is a 2nd year PhD student at UC San Diego. Her research focuses on using social signal processing and participatory design to identify and mitigate implicit bias in healthcare.

Lydia X. Z. Brown (they/them/theirs/themself or no pronouns)

Lydia X. Z. Brown is a Policy Counsel with CDT’s Privacy and Data Project, focused on disability rights and algorithmic fairness and justice. Their work has investigated algorithmic harm and injustice in public benefits determinations, hiring algorithms, and algorithmic surveillance that disproportionately impact disabled people, particularly multiply-marginalized disabled people. Outside of their work at CDT, Lydia is an adjunct lecturer and core faculty in disability studies at Georgetown University, and the founding director of the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment. They serve on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights, co-chair the ABA Section on Civil Rights and Social Justice’s Disability Rights Committee, serve as co-president of the Disability Rights Bar Association, and represent the Disability Justice Committee on the National Lawyers Guild’s board. Lydia is a founding board member of the Alliance for Citizen-Directed Supports, and serves on several advisory committees, including for the Law and Politics of Digital Mental Health Technology project at the University of Melbourne, the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy at Brandeis University, and the Coelho Center for Disability Law, Policy, and Innovation at Loyola Law School. Before joining CDT, Lydia worked on disability rights and algorithmic fairness at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Tech Law and Policy. Lydia has spoken internationally and throughout the U.S. on a range of topics related to disability rights and disability justice, especially at the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and has published in numerous scholarly and community publications. In 2015, Pacific Standard named Lydia to its list of Top 30 Thinkers in the Social Sciences Under 30, and Mic named Lydia to its inaugural list of 50 impactful leaders, cultural influencers, and breakthrough innovators for the next generation. Most recently, Gold House Foundation named Lydia to its A100 list of America’s most impactful Asians for 2020.

Raksha Muthukumar (she/her)

Raksha Muthukumar is a founding organizer of the Alphabet Workers Union, the union for all workers under Google/Alphabet. She formerly worked as a software engineer at Google but recently left to pursue her activism full time. She is currently working at the YA-YA Network, an organization dedicated to empowering marginalized youth with the skills they need to become the activists of the future. Raksha is a deep believer in the power of storytelling, and she is passionate about sharing stories at the intersections of tech and labor and queerness - her published writings and podcast can be found on her website, www.raksha.gay. Raksha intends to be involved with the tech labor struggle as well as other leftist & abolitionist organizing for the foreseeable future.

Andrea Haverkamp (she/they)

Dr. Andrea Haverkamp (she/they) is a queer labor organizer, activist, and feral engineering academic. She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering with a doctoral minor field in Queer Studies from Oregon State University. Her research explores the experiences of transgender and gender nonconforming students in engineering and computer science, such as their sources of community support and collective resiliency, as well as the connections between anti-trans discourse and white nationalist radicalization pathways in STEM and nerddom cultures online. Dr. Haverkamp serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace, an open-source scholarly publication exploring the intersections of engineering and inequity. Before her Ph.D., Dr. Haverkamp worked as an engineer in the Federal government and served as a science education volunteer with the Peace Corps in Liberia. She is currently a labor organizer in the healthcare sector based in Seattle.

Levin Kim (they/them)

Levin (they/them) is currently based in Seattle, Washington. Broadly, Levin's work examines the intersection of technology, power, and bodies through different collaborative projects in academic research, creative work, and community organizing. They are pursuing a PhD in Information Science and organizing with UAW 4121, the union of Academic Student Employees at the University of Washington. In the past, Levin has worked at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society on the Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, and graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Women's and Gender Studies and a B.A. in Drama, with minors in Computer Science and Art & Design. More of their work can be found at: www.levinishere.com, and on Twitter at @levinishere.

Anaelia (Elia) Ovalle (they/she)

Elia is a PhD student in Computer Science at UCLA at the intersection of representation learning and algorithmic fairness with professors Majid Sarrafzadeh and Kai-Wei Chang. They are fascinated by the ways machines capture and represent information across various modalities, thinking about how representations impact an algorithm's fairness and robustness downstream. With particular interest in serving underrepresented communities, Elia enjoys both applying their research to the LGBTQIA+ population and minority health space. Previous to UCLA, they worked as a data scientist at Unity Technologies. Since then, Elia has also interned at Amazon (Prime Video) and Facebook (Responsible AI), seeking to measure and mitigate disparate outcomes within machine representations.

Elle Lett, PhD (Dr./she/her)

Elle Lett is a Black, transgender woman, statistician-epidemiologist and physician-in training. Through her work, she applies the theory and principles of Black feminism to understanding the health impacts of systemic racism, transphobia, and other forms of discrimination on oppressed groups in the United States. She holds a PhD in epidemiology, and master’s degrees in Statistics and Biostatistics. To date, her work has focused on intersectional approaches to transgender health and the health impacts of systemic racism, as demonstrated by state-sanctioned violence. Now, she is turning her focus to algorithmic fairness in clinical prediction models and mitigating systems of inequity in health services provision.