About the Speakers

Data journalist Meredith Broussard is a professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University, research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology, and the author of several award-winning books, including More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech and Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Her academic research focuses on artificial intelligence in investigative reporting and ethical AI, with a particular interest in using data analysis for social good. She appeared in the 2020 documentary Coded Bias, an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival that was nominated for an Emmy Award and an NAACP Image Award. Dr. Broussard’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, New America, the Institute of Museum & Library Services, and the Tow Center at Columbia Journalism School. A former features editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, she has also worked as a software developer at AT&T Bell Labs and the MIT Media Lab. Her features and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, and other outlets.

Lauren Klein is Professor of Data & Decision Sciences and English at Emory University, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab and the Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI Network. Her research brings together computational and critical methods to explore questions of gender, race, and justice, both in early America and today. Klein is the author (with Catherine D’Ignazio) of the award-winning Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020), and the editor (with Matthew K. Gold) of Debates in the Digital Humanities (Univ. of Minnesota Press), among other books and papers. Her next book, Data by Design: From the History of Visualization to the Future We Need, is forthcoming from the MIT Press in October 2026.

About the Moderators

Saima Akhtar is the Interim Director of the Vagelos Computational Science Center (CSC) at Barnard College. She is a computational social scientist with a background in architecture. Prior to joining Barnard, Saima was a postdoctoral associate in the Yale University Department of Computer Science, where she managed digital cultural heritage preservation projects between the fields of computer science and architecture. Saima earned her PhD in architecture and urban studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds degrees from MIT and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Gabrielle Gutierrez is an Assistant Professor in the Neuroscience and Behavior Department at Barnard College and an affiliate of the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at the Zuckerman Institute, Columbia University. Her work focuses on understanding the brain’s fundamental operating principles: she develops mathematical models and theories that predict how neural circuits could work given the building blocks available to them, and uses these predictions to uncover the broader logic the brain uses to process information and guide behavior. Her research has led her to investigate various neural systems—from rhythmic pattern generation in the crustacean, to visual processing in the retina, to neural networks that control circadian rhythms. Her current research interests are focused on applying network science to connectome data to discover neuronal circuits in the understudied regions of the fruit fly brain. Gabrielle Gutierrez has a PhD in Neuroscience from Brandeis University. She did her graduate work in Eve Marder’s lab. She received her bachelor’s degree from Barnard College where she majored in Physics and minored in Applied Mathematics.