A member of the Brown CS class of 2013, Jonah Kagan is a software engineer at VotingWorks, a small nonprofit organization dedicated to building reliable, open-source election technology like voting machines, ballot scanners, and election-auditing software. When asked about the skills he uses for his career, Kagan explained that the knowledge learned in his very first computer science class, CSCI 0190 Accelerated Introduction to Computer Science, has helped him in his day-to-day life.
The inaugural discussion in a series convened by Brown’s Office of the Provost and Data Science Institute detailed the history of artificial intelligence and new questions generative AI is raising.
Now in its fifth year, the Socially Responsible Computing (SRC) program at Brown CS, which helps aspiring technologists keep individual and societal interests at the forefront of their work, has received some significant new support: a grant from the Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN) that will promote curricular changes with wide-ranging implications for CS education. Directed by lead investigators Kathi Fisler and Julia Netter, both Brown CS faculty members, the grant will be managed jointly by Brown CS, Brown’s Data Science Institute, and Brown’s Center for Technological Responsibility, Reimagination, and Redesign (CNTR). PIT-UN is a partnership of 63 colleges …
The influence of computation and data analysis is not slowing down anytime soon. With BrownTogether support, the Department of Computer Science is building on its expertise to make sure society is ready for whatever comes next in technology.
By leading in-school programs and after-school clubs that teach coding, the student organization Brown IgniteCS aims to expand access to careers in computer science for local K-12 students.
This year, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation Pandemic Response Policy Research Fund is providing $226,536 to support four Brown University research projects that will help policymakers, health officials, educators, and community leaders understand and address critical lessons learned from COVID-19. One of them (“Privacy-Preserving Digital Health Certificates”), led by Brown CS faculty member Anna Lysyanskaya, will explore using privacy-preserving authentication algorithms in digital vaccine credentials.
Last month, Brown CS faculty member George Konidaris joined with five other artificial intelligence thought leaders in his home country of South Africa to found a commercial AI lab that may be the first of its kind: Lelapa AI. Lelapa's goal is to reverse the brain drain by enticing African AI researchers to return to the continent, and to use their talents to produce socially-grounded, Africa-centric AI for the benefit of the global south, which contains more than 85% of the world's population. Lelapa is built on three primary intentions: wisdom (in particular, Africa's niche skills in resource efficiency), family …
Last week, Brown CS faculty member Kathi Fisler was an invited panelist at Stanford University's inaugural Embedded Ethics Conference, which offered broad discussions applicable to creating effective ethics education programs, covering the full life cycle of program creation, development, and implementation. Panelists from different universities addressed creating new ethics initiatives and how to structure a successful program once this is done, while instructors presented live teaching demonstrations and ethics curricula.
Speaking before a U.S. Senate committee on the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence, computer scientist Suresh Venkatasubramanian urged lawmakers to establish regulations to govern AI-based systems.
