SPEAKERS 2024
SYED Ishtiaque Ahmed
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto; Faculty Affiliate, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Toronto, and the director of the Third Space research group. He is also a graduate faculty member of the School of Environment, a senior fellow at Massey College, and a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. He co-organizes the monthly Critical Computing Seminar at U of T, and co-steers U of T's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) initiative. Ahmed’s research focuses on the design challenges around strengthening the voices of marginalized communities around the world. He has conducted ethnography and built technologies with many underprivileged communities in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, China, Canada, and the US. Ahmed received his PhD and maste’rs degree from Cornell University, and his bachelor’s degree from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). He is a recipient of the International Fulbright Science and Technology fellowship, Fulbright Centennial fellowship, and a Schwartz Reisman Institute fellowship, among others. His research has been funded by all three branches of Canadian tri-council research (NSERC, CIHR, SSHRC), as well as NSF, NIH, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel, Samsung, the World Bank, UNICEF, and UNDP, among others.
➦ Session: What is the future of online safety and content moderation?
Ashton Anderson
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto; Research Lead, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
Ashton Anderson is an assistant professor of computer science at University of Toronto and a research lead at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Anderson is broadly interested in research that bridges the gap between computer science and the social sciences. He holds a PhD in computer science from Stanford University. Anderson is a co-creator of the Maia Chess project.
➦ Session: Algorithms to support AI safety cases
DR. MAMATHA BHAT
Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto; Scientist, Toronto General Hospital Research Institute
Dr. Mamatha Bhat is a hepatologist and clinician-scientist at UHN’s Ajmera Transplant Centre and an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. She is also a scientist at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute and has a graduate appointment with the Institute of Medical Science at U of T. Dr. Bhat completed a transplant hepatology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, followed by a PhD in medical biophysics (U of T) through a Canadian Institutes of Health Research fellowship. Dr. Bhat’s research program aims to improve long-term outcomes of liver transplantation through precision medicine. Her program is unique in using AI tools with bioinformatics to personalize the care of transplant recipients. Her interdisciplinary program has been supported by CIHR, Terry Fox Research Institute, Stem Cell Network, and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), among others. Dr. Bhat is on the executive committee of the Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program; vice-chair of the International Liver Transplant Society Basic and Translational Science Research committee; and an associate editor for the American Journal of Transplantation. She is the recipient of the 2022 CIHR-INMD-CASL Early Career Researcher prize, the 2020 Polanyi Prize, and the 2021 American Society of Transplantation Basic Science Career Development Award.
➦ Session: Innovating care: An interdisciplinary dialogue on AI in healthcare
Daniel Buchman
Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto; Scientist, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)
Daniel Buchman is a bioethicist and scientist at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), an associate professor in the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, a member of U of T’s Joint Centre for Bioethics, an affiliate scientist at the Krembil Research Institute at the University Health Network, and director of the Everyday Ethics Lab. Buchman’s work in bioethics draws upon a transdisciplinary toolkit of theoretical as well as empirical approaches. He recently completed a term as a board member of the Canadian Bioethics Society and is currently a member of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Advisory Committee on Ethics. Buchman’s research explores ethical issues at the intersection of clinical practice and population health, with particular interest in mental health, substance use, and chronic pain, and themes of stigma, social justice, identity, and compassion featuring prominently. His research has been funded by agencies including CIHR, the Mental Health Commission of Canada, and AMS Healthcare. Some of Buchman’s current projects explore ethical issues related to stigma, chronic pain, and neurotechnologies; industry-healthcare relationships and conflicts of interest; opioids; psychedelics; palliative approaches to mental health care; and big data and AI.
➦ Session: Innovating care: An interdisciplinary dialogue on AI in healthcare
Huili Chen
Research Fellow, Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society, Harvard University
Huili Chen is a multidisciplinary researcher, scientist, and designer with a passion for creative practices, holding a PhD in the Program in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT Media Lab. She is currently a research fellow (2023-2024) at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Chen’s research is at the intersection of social robotics, human-centered AI, and interactive communication, integrating theories and methods from computer science, psychology, and design. With the pursuit of intellectual synergies, she is interested in taking cross-disciplinary approaches to seek answers to fundamental questions on human experience and extending the boundaries of human capacity. Chen’s work has been published in top-tier journals and conferences in human-computer interaction and human-centered computing, including IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing; Computers & Education; Bioinformatics; the Conference on Human-Robot Interaction; the Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization; the Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education; and the International Conference on Multimodal Interaction. She has received best paper nominations at ICMI2020 and HRI, and her research has been featured in MIT News, Asparagus Magazine, and the CODAME Art + Tech Festival. Chen has been awarded Forbes China's 30 Under 30, the Learning Innovation Fellowship at the MIT Media Lab, and presidential fellowship at Princeton University, among other global accolades.
➦ Session: Designing human-machine coexistence
I. Glenn Cohen
James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Faculty Director, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics
I. Glenn Cohen is James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and faculty director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics. One of the world’s leading experts on bioethics and the law, Cohen has authored more than 200 research articles and chapters as well as op-eds in the New Republic, Time Magazine, and other venues. Cohen is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of more than 20 books, including COVID-19 and the Law (2023), Reproductive Technologies and the Law (2022), and The Future of Medical Device Regulation (2022). Prior to becoming a professor, he served as a law clerk to Judge Michael Boudin and as a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice. Cohen’s current projects relate to medical AI, health information technologies, reproductive technology, the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs, health policy, FDA law, medical tourism, and many other topics. His fellowship affiliations include the Hastings Center and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and his work has frequently been covered by media such as NPR, CNN, and the New York Times. He leads multiple research projects on precision medicine, biomedical innovation, digital health, and related topics as they intersect with law. Cohen is also an editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences and serves on several committees in health research as well as bioethics advisory groups for life sciences companies like Bayer.
➦ Session: Designing human-machine coexistence
Beth Coleman
Associate Professor, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, University of Toronto; Research Lead, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
Beth Coleman is an associate professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Working in the disciplines of science and technology studies, generative aesthetics, and Black poesis, her research focuses on smart technology and machine learning, urban data and civic engagement, and generative arts. She is the author of Hello Avatar and multiple articles, including “Race as Technology.” She is a senior visiting researcher with Google Brain and Responsible AI as well as a 2021 Google Artists + Machine Intelligence (AMI) awardee. She is a founding member of the Trusted Data Sharing group and research lead on AI policy and praxis at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Her research affiliations have included the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University; Microsoft Research New England; Data & Society Institute, New York; and the European Commission’s Digital Futures project. She served as the founding director of the U of T Black Research Network. She recently completed the book and exhibition Reality Was Whatever Happened: Octavia Butler AI and Other Possible Worlds (K Verlag, Berlin) and the monograph, AI in the World: Perils and Possibilities of a General Purpose Technology.
➦ Session: AI and the future of democracy
Maaz Gardezi
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Virginia Tech
Maaz Gardezi is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Virginia Tech who explores the intersection of climate change and the social and political implications of emerging digital technologies in food and agriculture systems. His interdisciplinary work focuses on building sustainable and socially just food and agricultural systems. Gardezi maintains several projects through his Technology-Environment-Society Lab at Virginia Tech with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) grant. His research focuses on precision agriculture, exploring how emerging technologies can help farmers adapt to climate change while addressing social and political inequalities. Gardezi's participatory research/design methods involve farmers and farm workers, along with nonprofit organizations and industry experts to balance innovation with demands of social justice. He has also focused on climate adaptation and vulnerability in South Asia, examining power structures, outlining paths to empower marginalized communities, and innovating methods and theories in sustainability and climate. Gardezi has a bachelor’s degree in economics from University of Bath (UK), a master’s degree in environmental policy from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a PhD in sociology and sustainable agriculture from Iowa State University. He has worked in the private sector (Porsche Cars Great Britain) and non-profits (World Wildlife Fund), and as a consultant to government bodies.
➦ Session: Changing climate: The potential and limits of technology for sustainable cities
Avi Goldfarb
Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; Research Lead, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
Avi Goldfarb is the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and a professor of marketing at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He is also chief data scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab, a research lead at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Goldfarb’s research focuses on the economic effects of information technology. He is co-author of Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence (2018) and Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence (2022) with Ajay Agrawal and Joshua Gans. He has published academic articles in marketing, statistics, law, management, medicine, political science, refugee studies, physics, computing, and economics.
➦ Session: AI adoption in industry
Vanessa GRAY
Co-Director, Environmental Data Justice Lab, University of Toronto
Vanessa Gray is co-director of the Environmental Data Justice Lab in the Technoscience Research Unit at the University of Toronto. She is an Anishnaabe kwe from Aamjiwnaang First Nation, located in Canada’s Chemical Valley. As a grassroots organizer, land defender, and educator, Gray works to decolonize environmental justice research by linking scholarly findings to traditional teachings. She continues to take part in a diversity of tactics such as direct action, classroom lectures, co-hosting Toxic Tours (a community-led storytelling and mapping experience on the impacts of plastic production and disposal on frontline communities), and Water Gatherings.
➦ Session: Changing climate: The potential and limits of technology for sustainable cities
Roger Grosse
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto; Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence; Faculty Affiliate, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
Roger Grosse is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, a founding member of the Vector Institute, and a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. He is also a member of technical staff on the alignment team at Anthropic through the summer of 2024. Grosse’s research aims to better understand neural net training dynamics to improve training speed, generalization, uncertainty estimation, and automatic hyperparameter tuning. He is now focusing on applying understanding of deep learning to AI alignment, including identifying training examples responsible for surprising behaviour, investigating when neural nets learn mesa-optimizers, and eliciting reliable information from models we don’t fully trust. Grosse holds a Sloan Fellowship, Canada Research Chair, and Canada CIFAR AI Chair. He received his BS in symbolic systems from Stanford in 2008, an MS in computer science from Stanford in 2009, and a PhD in computer science from MIT in 2014, studying under Bill Freeman and Josh Tenenbaum. From 2014-2016, Grosse was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, working with Ruslan Salakhutdinov. Along with Colorado Reed, Grosse created Metacademy, a website that creates personalized learning plans for machine learning and related fields.
➦ Session: Algorithms to support AI safety cases
Gillian Hadfield
Professor, Faculty of Law and Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence; Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society
Gillian Hadfield is the inaugural Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society and professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law and Rotman School of Management. Hadfield is a Schmidt Sciences AI2050 senior fellow and holds a CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. She was the inaugural director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society from 2019 through 2023. Her research is focused on the study of human and machine normative systems; safety and governance for AI; and innovative design for legal and dispute resolution systems in advanced and developing market economies. Hadfield was a senior policy advisor for OpenAI from 2018 to 2023, and is an advisor to courts, governments, and several organizations and technology companies engaged in innovating new ways to make law and policy smarter, more accessible, and more responsive to technology. Her book Rules for a Flat World: Why Humans Invented Law and How to Reinvent It for a Complex Global Economy was published by Oxford University Press in 2017; a paperback edition with a new prologue on AI was published in 2020 and an audiobook version released in 2021.
➦ Session: A world of natural and artificial agents in a shared environment
Peter Loewen
Director, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto; Robert Vipond Distinguished Professor in Democracy, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto; Director, Policy, Elections, and Representation Lab (PEARL); Associate director, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
Peter Loewen is director of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and Robert Vipond Distinguished Professor in Democracy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is also director of the Policy, Elections, and Representation Lab (PEARL), associate director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, a senior fellow at Massey College, and a fellow with the Public Policy Forum. Loewen’s research focuses on how politicians can make better decisions, how citizens can make better choices, and how governments can address the disruption of technology and harness its opportunities. Loewen received his BA from Mount Allison University (2002) and his PhD from l’Université de Montréal (2008), and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of British Columbia and the University of California at San Diego. Loewen’s work has been published in Nature Medicine, Nature Human Behaviour, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and other journals. He has edited four books and is a regular contributor to the media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star and National Post.
Kelly Lyons
Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto; Interim Director, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
Kelly Lyons is a professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, with a cross-appointment to the Department of Computer Science. She is currently serving as interim director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Prior to joining the University of Toronto, she was the program director of the IBM Toronto Lab Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS). Lyons’ research interests include service science, knowledge mobilization, data science, and software engineering. She has co‐authored several papers, served on program committees for conferences, given many keynotes and invited presentations, and co‐chaired several workshops. She is the recipient of numerous grants, including an NSERC Strategic Partnership Grant, NSERC Discovery Grant, NSERC Collaborative Research and Development Grant, two NSERC Engage Grants, several MITACS Accelerate Grants, and a SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant. Lyons is an IBM faculty fellow and a board member of CS-Can/Info-Can, Canada’s leading organization for the discipline of computer science.
Muhammad Mamdani
Vice-President of Data Science and Advanced Analytics, Unity Health Toronto; Director, Temerty Faculty of Medicine Centre for Artificial Intelligence Education and Research in Medicine (T-CAIREM), University of Toronto
Muhammad Mamdani is vice-president of data science and advanced analytics at Unity Health Toronto and director of the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine Centre for Artificial Intelligence Education and Research in Medicine (T-CAIREM). Mamdani’s team bridges advanced analytics with clinical and management decision-making to improve healthcare. Mamdani is also a professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. He is also an affiliate scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) and a faculty affiliate of the Vector Institute. Mamdani holds a doctor of pharmacy degree from the University of Michigan, a fellowship in pharmacoeconomics from the Detroit Medical Centre, a master of arts degree in econometric theory from Wayne State University, and a master of public health degree from Harvard University with a focus on statistics and epidemiology. He has previously been named among Canada’s Top 40 under 40. Mamdani’s research interests include pharmacoepidemiology, pharmacoeconomics, drug policy, and the application of advanced analytics approaches to clinical problems and health policy decision-making. He has published over 500 studies in peer-reviewed healthcare journals.
➦ Session: Innovating care: An interdisciplinary dialogue on AI in healthcare
Branka Marijan
Senior Researcher, Project Ploughshares
Branka Marijan is a senior researcher at Project Ploughshares, where she researches the military and security implications of emerging technologies. Her work examines ethical concerns regarding the development of autonomous weapons systems and the impact of artificial intelligence and robotics on security provision and trends in warfare. Her research interests include trends in warfare, civilian protection, use of drones, and civil-military relations. She holds a PhD from the Balsillie School of International Affairs with a specialization in conflict and security. She has conducted research on post-conflict societies and published academic articles and reports on the impacts of conflict on civilians and diverse issues of security governance, including security sector reform. Marijan closely follows United Nations disarmament efforts and attends international and national consultations and conferences. Marijan is a board member of the Peace and Conflict Studies Association of Canada (PACS-Can).
➦ Session: Harming virtuously: Value alignment for harmful AI
Kristina McElheran
Assistant Professor, Department of Management, University of Toronto; Faculty Affiliate, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society; Fellow, Stanford Digital Economy Lab
Kristina McElheran is an assistant professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto (UTSC & Rotman School of Management), and affiliated with the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, Boston University’s Technology & Policy Research Initiative, Harvard University’s Labor & Worklife Program, and the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. Previously an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, McElheran also worked for two early-stage technology ventures in Silicon Valley prior to earning her PhD at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. She currently serves as a lab economist at the Creative Destruction Lab, one of Toronto’s premier seed-stage programs for technology startups. McElheran conducts empirical research on the link between digital technologies, firm performance, and the organizational and market contexts that enable firms to thrive in the digital age. Her work has been featured in Management Science, American Economic Review, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Journal of Econometrics, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Forbes, Rotman Magazine, and Communications of the ACM.
➦ Session: AI adoption in industry
Bree McEwan
Associate Professor, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology; Faculty Affiliate, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
Bree McEwan is an associate professor in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology (ICCIT) with a graduate appointment in the tri-campus Department of Sociology. She is also an associate director for the University of Toronto Data Sciences Institute, and a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. McEwan’s research sits at the intersection of interpersonal communication and communication technology. Recent and current projects involve investigating relational communication through mediated channels, the diffusion of issues information through social networks, and understanding interpersonal communication processes in virtual reality. Related to this work is the underlying question of how advances in technology, including online communication, virtual and augmented reality, and generative AI transform the human experience. She has established the McEwan Mediated Communication Lab to investigate social and parasocial virtual reality experiences. McEwan is the author of Navigating New Media Networks: Understanding and Managing Communication Challenges in a Networked Society (2017) and Interpersonal Encounters: Connecting Through Communication (2022). She is currently a co-organizer of the International Communication Association Communication and Technology/Mobile Doctoral Consortium, the Post-API Conference (focused on social media data acquisition), and the Questioning Reality conference focused on scholarship related to social VR.
➦ Session: What is the future of online safety and content moderation?
M. Reza Najafi
Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Western University
M. Reza Najafi is associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Western University. Najafi leads the Hydroclimate Extremes and Climate Change Lab (HydroClimEX Lab), whose interdisciplinary research program focuses on addressing the challenges associated with nonstationary hydroclimatic extremes, particularly floods and droughts. Drawing on expertise from diverse fields such as engineering, climate change science, hydrology, hydraulics, risk assessment, data analytics, and statistics, HydroClimEx investigates the complex interrelationships between hazards and infrastructure systems in a changing climate. The Lab’s work contributes to the development of robust risk and resilience frameworks, supporting the sustainability of both the natural and built environments. Najafi currently serves as an associate editor of the American Geophysical Union’s Water Resources Research Journal. He is a co-founder and co-director of the Centre for Multihazard Risk and Resilience (CMRR) at Western, bringing together over 20 faculty members across three faculties. CMRR offers a collaborative specialization in hazards, risks, and resilience, holds annual workshops on multihazard risk and resilience, and closely collaborates with researchers and stakeholders to address critical national and international issues associated with natural hazards and risks.
➦ Session: Changing climate: The potential and limits of technology for sustainable cities
Beth Simone Noveck
Professor, Northeastern University; Director, Burnes Center for Social Change; Director, The GovLab
Beth Simone Noveck is a professor at Northeastern University, where she directs the Burnes Center for Social Change and its partner project, The GovLab. She is faculty at the Institute for Experiential AI, School of Law, and in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, the College of Arts, Design, and Media, the College of Engineering, and affiliated faculty at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. Noveck’s work focuses on using AI to reimagine participatory democracy and strengthen governance. Her civic technology projects include Unchat (an online platform for democratic engagement) and Peer-to-Patent (connecting scientists to policymakers). Noveck served as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer under President Obama and founded the White House Open Government Initiative for making government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. She served as senior advisor for UK Prime Minister David Cameron and on Chancellor Angela Merkel's Digital Council. Appointed the State of New Jersey’s first Chief Innovation Officer, Noveck and her team are using new technology to improve equitable government delivery of services. Noveck is also the founder of open, online courses such as Open Justice for legal innovators and InnovateUS for public sector professionals. Her authored books include Solving Public Problems: How to Fix Our Government and Change Our World (named a Best Book of 2021 by Stanford Social Innovation Review) and Democracy Rebooted: Unleashing the Power of AI. Noveck was named one of the “Foreign Policy 100” by Foreign Policy, one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business,” and one of the World's 100 Most Influential Academics in Government by Apolitical.
➦ Session: Ian P. Sharp Lecture: From ballots to bots: AI’s transformative role in democratic societies
Ray Perrault
Distinguished Computer Scientist, SRI International; Co-Chair, AI Index Steering Committee, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Ray Perrault is a distinguished computer scientist in SRI International’s Artificial Intelligence Center, of which he was director for 30 years, and the co-chair of the AI Index Steering Committee at Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). His main research interests are in natural language processing and speech act theory. He was co-principal investigator of the CALO Project, a large, multi-institutional, DARPA-funded project whose objective was to build an intelligent office assistant that learns through interaction with its user and the world. Several technologies developed on that project, including Siri, have been transitioned to commercial and military applications. He is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), has been president of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) and the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), served as co-editor-in-chief of the Artificial Intelligence Journal, and received the IJCAI Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award. He is chair of the board of trustees of the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a PhD from the Department of Computer and Communication Sciences at the University of Michigan.
Christy prada
CEO, Future Fertility
Christy Prada is the CEO at Future Fertility, a Toronto-based AI company focused on closing critical information gaps in the fertility journey. She has a track record as a builder, spending her career creating and guiding high-performing teams across a range of fields, including developing and scaling new models for commercial growth at start-ups. Prior to Future Fertility, Prada was the vice-president of business development at Maple, Canada’s leading virtual care provider. Joining as the third employee, Prada spent four years scaling the team and commercial business, creating and leading the go-to-market strategy and execution for the B2B business. Prada is also an investor as a limited partner with the Women’s Equity Lab, Toronto Chapter, investing in early-stage women-led ventures. With this experience combined with her passion for finding innovative solutions to the world’s toughest healthcare challenges, Prada leads the Future Fertility team in its mission to empower fertility doctors, specialists, and patients with advanced AI-driven insights globally.
➦ Session: AI adoption in industry
Peter Railton
Gregory S. Kavka Distinguished University Professor and John Stephenson Perrin Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan
Peter Railton's research has been in ethics and the philosophy of science, focusing on questions about the nature of objectivity, value, norms, and explanation. Recently, he began working in aesthetics, moral psychology, and the theory of action. He has a special interest in the bearing of empirical research in psychology and evolutionary theory on these questions. His collection of papers in ethics and meta-ethics, Facts, Values, and Norms: Essays toward a Morality of Consequence, appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2003. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley and Princeton University, and received fellowships from the Society for the Humanities (Cornell University), the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), and has been associated with the Centre de Recherches Anglophones (CREA) in Paris and the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature (CSMN) in Oslo. Railton has been president of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division (2011-12) and received the 2009 D'Arms Award for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities. In recent years he has worked and taught with psychologists in a number of fields.
➦ Session: A world of natural and artificial agents in a shared environment
Harper Reed
Independent Technologist and Entrepreneur
Harper Reed is a technologist that predicts the future for a living. He spends most of his life building big things, hacking things, and talking about doing both of those things. As CTO of the Obama 2012 campaign, Reed was the first to bring the tech mentality to a political level. He believes the talent of a great bunch of humans can transform an organization like nothing else and uses that belief to strengthen, deploy, and inspire every team he works with. Reed also believes his incredible luck has led him to achieve wonderful things like pioneering crowdsourcing at Threadless.com, founding Modest Inc, and guiding the software team at PayPal. His most recent venture was General Galactic Corporation, which he shut down in 2023. You can find Harper hacking on personal projects and enjoying life in Chicago with his partner, Hiromi, and their beautiful and bizarre poodle, Lulu.
➦ Session: AI and the future of democracy
Regina Rini
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, York University
Regina Rini holds the Canada Research Chair in Social Reasoning and teaches in the Department of Philosophy at York University. She works on a range of topics in ethics, epistemology, and political philosophy, with particular attention to how new technologies impact social norms. She also writes regularly for public audiences, including a column in the Times Literary Supplement and short essays in the New York Times and the Guardian. Her most recent book is The Ethics of Microaggression. She is currently writing a book on the role of epistemology in public life.
➦ Session: What is the future of online safety and content moderation?
Nisarg Shah
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto; Research Lead, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society; Faculty Affiliate, Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Nisarg Shah is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. He is also a research lead for ethics of AI at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, a faculty affiliate of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and part of the board of advisors of the nonprofit AIGS Canada. His work has received prestigious recognitions such as the Kalai Prize by Game Theory Society (2024), "Innovators Under 35" by MIT Technology Review Asia Pacific (2022), "AI's 10 to Watch" by IEEE Intelligent Systems (2020), Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award by IFAAMAS (2016), and a PhD Fellowship by Facebook (2014-15). Shah conducts research at the intersection of computer science and economics, addressing issues of fairness, efficiency, elicitation, and incentives that arise when humans are affected by algorithmic decision-making. His recent work develops theoretical foundations for fairness in fields such as voting, resource allocation, matching, and machine learning. He has co-developed the not-for-profit website Spliddit.org, which has helped more than 250,000 people make provably fair decisions in their everyday lives. He earned his PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.
➦ Session: Harming virtuously: Value alignment for harmful AI
Luke Stark
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Information & Media Studies, Western University; Scholar-in-Residence, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
Luke Stark is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Information & Media Studies (FIMS) at Western University. He researches the ethical, historical, and social impacts of computational technologies like artificial intelligence systems powered by techniques like machine learning, and is particularly animated by how these technologies mediate social and emotional expression, make inferences about people, and are reshaping our relationships to collective action, our selves, and each other. Stark’s current book project, Reordering Emotion: Histories of Computing and Human Feelings from Cybernetics to Artificial Intelligence, is a history of affective computing and the digital quantification of human emotion from the 1940s to today. Before joining Western, Stark was previously a postdoctoral researcher in the Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics (FATE) Group at Microsoft Research Montreal, a fellow and an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at Dartmouth College. Stark received his PhD from the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, and a BA and MA from the University of Toronto. He is currently appointed as the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society’s inaugural scholar-in-residence.
➦ Session: Innovating care: An interdisciplinary dialogue on AI in healthcare
Anna SU
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto; Research Lead, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
Anna Su's primary areas of research include the law and history of international human rights law, comparative constitutional law, technology and international law, and law and religion. She is currently a research lead at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. She is also a Nootbaar Institute Fellow on Law and Religion at Pepperdine University School of Law. Anna holds an SJD from Harvard Law School where her dissertation was awarded the John Laylin Prize for best paper in international law. She received her JD and AB degrees from the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. Prior to coming to Toronto, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy based in SUNY Buffalo Law School, and a graduate fellowship in ethics with the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. She worked as a law clerk for the Philippine Supreme Court and was a consultant to the Philippine government negotiating panel with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. She holds a cross-appointment at U of T’s Department of History (by courtesy).
➦ Session: Designing human-machine coexistence
Leah West
Associate Professor, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University
Leah West is an associate professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. She completed her SJD at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 2020 where her research explored the application of criminal, constitutional, and international law to state conduct in cyberspace. She is also the national administrator of the Canadian National Rounds of the Phillip C. Jessup International Law Moot, serves as counsel with Friedman Mansour LLP, and was an inaugural McCain Institute National Security and Counterterrorism fellow. West is the co-author of National Security Law (2021), co-editor of Stress Tested: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Canadian National Security (2021), and author of peer-reviewed articles on legal issues concerning national security, cyber operations, and armed conflict. West is a regular commentator on national security matters for media outlets, and has testified before the House of Commons, the Senate, and the European Parliament. West previously served as counsel with the Department of Justice, and has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada, the Federal Court in designated proceedings, and the Security Intelligence Review Committee. West clerked for the Honourable Justice Mosley of the Federal Court of Canada. Prior to attending law school, West served in the Canadian Armed Forces; she deployed to Afghanistan in 2010.
➦ Session: Harming virtuously: Value alignment for harmful AI