Speakers for the Friday Collaborative Roundtables

• Denise Anthony: Department Chair and Professor of Health Management & Policy in the School of Public Health, University of Michigan. Her research focuses on how social dynamics of cooperation, trust, and privacy shape behavior related to information technologies, and the implications for data produced and shared via those technologies.

• Rob Arntfield: Associate Professor of Medicine, Director of Critical Care Ultrasound Program & Fellowship, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University. He initiated an AI and ultrasound program called “Deep Breathe” (deepbreathe.ai), which aims to unlock new possibilities for physicians treating or patients suffering from respiratory problems.

• Andrew Buzzell: Postdoctoral Researcher at the Rotman Institute of Philosophy at Western. His research concerns questions at the intersection of technology, ethics, and epistemology, and he has contributed to projects involving misinformation and disinformation in social media systems, large language models, big data and public health ethics, and the application of AI in human resources context.

• Alissa Centivany: Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario. Her research focuses on technology policy, law, and ethics. She is co-founder and co-director of Tesserae: The Centre for Digital Justice, Community, and Democracy at Western University. She is part of a SSHRC-funded team studying the use of AI to address housing and homelessness (PI: Stark) and also co-organized the SSHRC-funded “Big Data at the Margins” series.

• Benjamin Chin-Yee: Physician in the Division of Hematology at Western University and PhD candidate and Gates Scholar in the History and Philosophy of Science at King’s College, Cambridge University. His current research focuses on the impact of big data, genomic medicine, and artificial intelligence in clinical medical practice.

• Anthony D’Amato: Chief Engineer, ADAS Component and Systems Engineering at Ford Motor Company. His various roles in research engineering at Ford Motor Company focus on autonomous vehicle systems and advanced driver assistance systems, including the safety and regulatory compliance of such systems

• Jason D’Cruz: Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Philosophy Department at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He is an expert in the philosophy of trust and distrust and is currently Principal Investigator for “Trustworthy AI from a User Perspective,” an interdisciplinary project focused on how AI systems make assessments of human trustworthiness and on how we ought to characterize ‘trustworthy AI.’

• Mark Daley: Special Advisor to the President on data strategy at Western University. He previously served as Western’s Associate Vice-President (Research). Daley holds joint faculty appointments in six departments and is a member of the Brain and Mind Institute and the Rotman Institute of Philosophy, an associate scientist at the Lawson Health Research institute and a faculty affiliate of the Vector Institute for Artificial intelligence.

• Colleen Flood: Dean of Law at Queen’s University (as of July 1, 2023); previously, Professor of Law and University Research Chair in Health Law & Policy at the University of Ottawa. She has a CIHR-funded project that explores how AI used in healthcare may incorporate biases that adversely impact marginalized communities, and whether existing laws and regulations are sufficient to address these concerns.

• Trystan Goetze: Senior Lecturer in Ethics of Engineering at Cornell University, Director of the Sue G. and Harry E. Bovay Program in the History and Ethics of Professional Engineering and affiliate of the Sage School of Philosophy. They worked with Athabasca University and Ethically Aligned AI, Inc., to create a series of AI ethics micro-credential courses. Their current projects are on trust and Big Tech, epistemic blame, AI ethics, and computer science education.

• Jasmine Gunkel: Postdoctoral researcher in bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, and soon to be Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Western. Her research focuses on intimacy. She’s concerned with whether it’s possible to have intimate relationships with AI, and if it is, whether it’s then reasonable to trust AI.

• Min Kyung-Lee: Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. She has conducted some of the first empirical studies examining the societal implications of AI use in the management and governance of society. Her expertise extends to developing theories, methods, and tools for human-centered AI and in deploying the tools through collaborations with real-world stakeholders and organizations.

• Susie Lindsay: Counsel at the Law Commission of Ontario where she leads the AI and the Civil Justice System project. She is principal author of the LCO’s report, “Accountable AI,” and she also runs the LCO’s joint initiative on AI and Human Rights with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. The latter involves the design of a human rights AI assessment tool for developers and administrators of AI systems.

• Soodeh Nikan: Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research focuses on developing explainable artificial intelligence (AI) strategies for autonomous vehicles, with learning abilities that imitate human brain perception and reasoning. The goal of this research is to design robust, unbiased and industry-standardized AI-based platforms for intelligent and safe mobility which can be extended to other vision-based applications.

• Anabel Quan-Haase: Professor of Information and Media Studies and Sociology at the University of Western Ontario. Her interdisciplinary work and teaching focuses on understanding the effects of technology on society. Her research projects examine how young people use instant messaging, Facebook, mobile phones and other communication tools and what the social consequences are for their social relations, community, and social capital.

• Joanna Redden: Associate Professor in Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University and co-director of Data Justice Lab. Her research focuses on the datafication of governance. She investigates how government information systems and service provision are changing, the democratic implications of changing government practices and how these transformations are affecting people. Her previous work has investigated the relationships between digital media and poverty politics

• Heather Stewart: Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Oklahoma State University. Her research lies at the intersection of feminist philosophy, political philosophy, digital ethics, and bioethics with a specific interest in harmful speech phenomena, health disparities, and social dis/trust. She is also a research fellow for the OSU Humanities Initiative on issues in “Digital Humanities”.

• Vanessa Thomas: Senior Advisor of Technology Review with the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency’s Technology Directorate, Government of Canada. They conduct technical investigations of digital systems, draft reports that explain advanced and novel technical subjects, and assess the risks associated with various IT systems, including ones that employ automated decision making.