Public Forum Biographical Sketches

Heather Douglas  is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University.  She received her Ph.D. from the History and Philosophy of Science Department at the University of Pittsburgh in 1998, and has held tenure-line positions since then at the University of Puget Sound, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Waterloo.  She is the author of Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal (2009) as well as numerous articles on values in science, the moral responsibilities of scientists, and the role of science in democratic societies. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation. In 2016, she was named a AAAS fellow. http://www.philosophy.msu.edu/people/faculty/heatherdouglas

Eric Horvitz is a technical fellow at Microsoft, where he serves as the director of Microsoft Research Labs worldwide and the Microsoft Research AI effort in Redmond, Washington. He pursues research on the principles and applications of AI, including machine learning, inference, planning, dialog and human-AI collaboration. His efforts and collaborations have led to fielded systems in healthcare, transportation, ecommerce, operating systems, and aerospace.  He received the Feigenbaum Prize and the Allen Newell Prize for contributions to the field of artificial intelligence.  Beyond work on AI principles, he pursues interests on broader societal influences of AI advances, including robustness and safety, fairness and transparency, and rising questions on ethical implications of AI systems in the open world. He co-founded the One Hundred Year Study on AI and the Partnership on AI to Support People and Society, a joint effort by industry, civil liberties groups, academics, and scientific organizations, including AAAI. Eric has been elected fellow of the AAAI, ACM, National Academy of Engineering (NAE), American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American College of Medical Informatics. He has served as president of the AAAI, and on advisory committees for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, DARPA, and the Allen Institute for AI.  Eric received his PhD and MD at Stanford University.   http://erichorvitz.com

Sabina Leonelli is professor in philosophy and history of science at the University of Exeter, UK, where she co-direct the Exeter Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences and leads the “Data Studies” research strand. Her research focuses on the methods and assumptions involved in the production, dissemination and use of big data for discovery; the ethical and social challenges involved in the extraction of knowledge from digital infrastructures; the ways in which the open science movement is redefining what counts as research and knowledge across different research environments; and the epistemic status of experimental organisms as models and data sources. Her work involves collaborations with natural and social scientists, and historians of science; involvement in science policy initiatives such as the implementation of the Open Science Agenda of the European Commission; and multiple sources of funding including a European Research Council award to work on the epistemology of data science (2014-2019). She has published widely within the philosophy of science as well as biology and science and technology studies, and her monograph Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study appeared in 2016 with the University of Chicago and was awarded the 2018 Lakatos Award. She is currently finishing a book on the impact of big and open data on research.  https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/sociology/staff/leonelli/

David Danks is the L. L. Thurstone Professor of Philosophy & Psychology, and Head of the Department of Philosophy, at Carnegie Mellon University. He works at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, and machine learning, integrating ideas, methods, and frameworks from each to advance our understanding of complex, cross-disciplinary problems. Most recently, Danks has used interdisciplinary approaches to address the human and social impacts when autonomous capabilities are introduced into technological systems, whether self-driving cars, autonomous weapons, or healthcare robots. His work is both theoretical and practical, including collaborations with industry groups and government agencies. His earlier work on computational cognitive science resulted in his book, Unifying the Mind: Cognitive Representations as Graphical Models, which developed an integrated cognitive model of complex human cognition. Danks is the recipient of a James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award (2008), and an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship (2017). https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/philosophy/people/faculty/danks.html 

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