CSSPP Roundtable Conversation | May 5, 2023
Keynote Speaker
Kevin Roose, Author and New York Times Technology Columnist
Kevin Roose is a technology columnist for The New York Times, based in the Bay Area. His column, The Shift, examines the intersection of technology, business, and culture.
Mr. Roose is the host of the podcast Rabbit Hole and writes regularly about online extremism, social media disinformation, AI and algorithms, and emerging technologies. Before joining The Times, he was a columnist for New York Magazine and a co-host of the Real Future TV documentary series. Mr. Roose is the New York Times best-selling author of three books. His latest is Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation.
Expert Panelists
Anima Anandkumar, Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Caltech
Anima Anandkumar is a Bren Professor at Caltech and Director of ML Research at NVIDIA. She was previously a Principal Scientist at Amazon Web Services. She has received several honors such as Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, NSF Career Award, Young investigator awards from DoD, and Faculty Fellowships from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Adobe. She is part of the World Economic Forum's Expert Network. She is passionate about designing principled AI algorithms and applying them in interdisciplinary applications. Her research focus is on unsupervised AI, optimization, and tensor methods.
Sean Comer, Principal Technical Artist, Activision/Infinity Ward
Sean Comer is a principal technical artist at Activision/Infinity Ward performing applied research to the areas of generative content creation, digital asset management, and performance capture. Specializing in numerical optimization and machine learning, Sean has over a decade of experience working with simulation and digital humans.
Justin Levitt, Professor of Law and Gerald T. McLaughlin Fellow, LMU Loyola Law School
Justin Levitt is the Gerald T. McLaughlin Fellow at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, and Loyola’s former Associate Dean for Research. He is a nationally recognized scholar of constitutional law, civil rights, and the law of democracy, with particular focus on election administration and redistricting. Professor Levitt has also served as a visiting faculty member at the Yale Law School, the USC Gould School of Law, and Caltech.
Carly Taylor, Security Strategist, Activision Publishing
Carly Taylor is a data scientist, computational chemist, and machine learning engineer. She obtained her MS in chemistry from the University of Colorado focusing on computational quantum dynamics. She has authored multiple peer-reviewed publications and holds two non-provisional machine learning patents. When she isn't writing about herself in the third person, building mechanical keyboards or neglecting the oxford comma, she works as a security strategist for Call of Duty at Activision Publishing.
Jennifer Wright, Research Services Manager, Cambridge University Press
Jennifer Wright leads Cambridge University Press’s Research Integrity and Publication Ethics team, and supports Cambridge’s books, journals, higher education program, and preprint platform in publication ethics best practice. She is also part of Cambridge’s Scholarly Communications Research & Development team, covering a broad range of activities in open research, impact, metascience, and scholarly publishing innovation. Jennifer was previously a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and climate science, and holds an MBA from Cranfield University.
Moderators
R. Michael Alvarez
Professor of Political and Computational Social Science, Caltech; Co-Director of the Caltech Center for Science, Society, and Public Policy (CSSPP)
Frederick Eberhardt
Professor of Philosophy, Caltech; Co-Director of the Caltech Center for Science, Society, and Public Policy (CSSPP)