ABOUT ME
I'm an associate professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University, where my research focuses on ethics, politics, and policy in computing. A philosopher by training, I study governance problems raised by new and emerging data-driven technologies and the underlying conceptual and normative problems that make it difficult to understand and tackle them. I have broad interests in technology ethics and policy, philosophy of technology, and science and technology studies, especially critical questions about data, privacy, and the ethics of automation.
Prospective students: I'm on sabbatical during AY 2026-27 and will not be recruiting new PhD students this cycle.
UPDATES
- Two new papers — "From Forensics to Ecosystems: Rethinking Watermarks for Generative AI Oversight," co-authored with John Thickstun and Gili Vidan, and "From Fair Representation to Just Recognition in Generative AI," with Severin Engelmann, will be at the upcoming AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES).
- New paper — My chapter on "Exploitation in the Platform Age" was published in Beate Roessler's and Valerie Steeves's new open access Cambridge University Press volume, Being Human in the Digital World.
- Two new papers on governing synthetic data, with many brilliant co-authors — "Critical Provocations for Synthetic Data" in Surveillance & Society and "Synthetic Health Data: Real Ethical Promise and Peril" in Hastings Center Report.
- I discussed differential privacy with Rachel Cummings and Jamal Magby on CDT's Tech Talk podcast.
- New paper — Jeremy Seeman and I published "Between Privacy and Utility: On Differential Privacy in Theory and Practice" in the new ACM Journal on Responsible Computing.
- New paper — My chapter on recent trends in privacy theory and policy making, "From Procedural Rights to Political Economy: New Horizons for Regulating Online Privacy," was published in Sabine Trepte's and Philipp Masur's new Routledge volume.
- New paper — Laura Cabrera and I published "Brain Data in Context: Are New Rights the Way to Mental and Brain Privacy?" in AJOB Neuroscience.
- New funding — Jen Wagner (PI), Laura Cabrera, Sara Gerke, and I were awarded NIH funding to study the ethics of synthetic data!
- New paper — I published a short, invited essay on "Data and the Good?" in the latest issue of Surveillance & Society.
- New paper — Kiel Brennan-Marquez and I published "Privacy, Autonomy, and the Dissolution of Markets" in the Knight First Amendment Institute's Data & Democracy Essay Series.
- New paper — I published "Decision Time: Normative Dimensions of Algorithmic Speed" in the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT).