Accelerator cohorts
PUBLIC INTEREST TECH ACCELERATOR COHORT
PUBLICINTEREST TECH ACCELERATOR COHORT
The Public Interest Technology University Network and the Day One Project have partnered together to run the Public Interest Tech (PIT) Accelerator. Each member of the PIT Accelerator cohort is developing a catalytic proposal for action within the public interest technology space.
FERNANDO DELGADO
Fernando Delgado is a PhD candidate in Information Science at Cornell University. Prior to commencing his doctoral studies, Fernando worked at H5, a pioneering firm in the field of legal technology designing and deploying algorithmic systems for fact-finding in civil litigation and white collar investigations.
His current academic research focuses on elaborating and refining design, evaluation, and governance frameworks for automated decision systems in high-stakes domains. He draws on theory and methods from the social science of technology and law, as well as the computational fields of information retrieval and machine learning. His research is supported by the McNair Scholars Program , the MacArthur Foundation program on Technology in the Public Interest, and the Russell Sage Foundation initiative on Computational Social Science.
MEG LETA JONES
Meg Leta Jones is an Associate Professor in the Communication, Culture, & Technology program, affiliate faculty in the Institute for Technology Law & Policy, and core faculty in the Science, Technology, & International Affairs program at Georgetown University. Her research covers comparative information and communication technology law, critical information and data studies, governance of emerging technologies, and the legal history of technology. Her first book, Ctrl+Z: The Right to be Forgotten, analyzes the social, legal, and technical aspects of digital oblivion. Her forthcoming book Cookies tells the transatlantic history of computer privacy through the lens of a familiar technical object.
BRANDIE NONNECKE
Brandie Nonnecke, PhD is the Founding Director of the CITRIS Policy Lab headquartered at UC Berkeley where she facilitates interdisciplinary tech policy research to inform evidence-based policymaking in the public and private sectors. Brandie has expertise in tech policy, internet governance, and human rights. She studies human rights at the intersection of law, policy, and emerging technologies with her current work primarily focusing on fairness, accountability, and appropriate governance mechanisms for AI. She is a Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She served as a fellow at the Aspen Institute’s Tech Policy Hub and at the World Economic Forum on the Council on the Future of the Digital Economy and Society. Her research has been featured in Wired, NPR, BBC News, MIT Technology Review, Buzzfeed News, among others. Her research publications, op-eds, and presentations are available at nonnecke.com.
CATHERINE CRUMP
Catherine Crump is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, School of Law, where she directs the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. Her advocacy and research focus on the impact of new technologies on civil liberties and the justice system.
Crump’s civil liberties advocacy focuses on uncovering information about how law enforcement agencies deploy surveillance technology and promoting expansive protections for privacy and free speech in the face of increasingly advanced technologies. Crump’s work also examines how technology is reshaping the justice system, from the investigative phase through trial to post-conviction supervision. Crump has litigated cases on behalf of clients in numerous federal district and appellate courts and in the California Supreme Court. She has also testified before Congress, the European Parliament, and various state legislatures and municipal bodies. She appears regularly in the news media, and her TED talk on automatic license plate readers has been viewed nearly 2 million times.
Crump’s scholarly agenda examines deployments of surveillance technology on the ground by state and local justice agencies. She seeks to harness the details of how surveillance is governed and deployed to inform broader theoretical debates about surveillance, liberty, and democratic accountability. Her article, Surveillance Policy Making by Procurement, appeared in the Washington Law Review. Her article Tracking the Trackers: An Examination of Electronic Monitoring of Youth in Practice, was published by the UC Davis Law Review. Prior to joining the Berkeley Law faculty, Crump spent nearly nine years at the American Civil
Liberties Union. Before that, she clerked for Judge M. Margaret McKeown of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Law School.
REBECCA WEXLER
Rebecca Wexler is an Assistant Professor at Berkeley Law School, where she teaches, researches, and writes on issues concerning data, technology, and criminal justice. She is also a
Faculty Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, and a Nonresident Fellow at The Brookings Institution. Prior to joining the faculty at Berkeley, Wexler clerked for Judge Pierre N. Leval of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (2017-2018) and for Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (2018-2019). She has worked as a Yale Public Interest Fellow at The Legal Aid Society’s criminal defense practice; a Lawyer-in-Residence at The Data and Society Research Institute; a Visiting Fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project; a Visiting Scholar at the Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law; a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University; and a Legal Intern at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Wexler holds an A.B. from Harvard College, an M.Phil. from Cambridge University, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Team Proposal: Privacy Laws Should Help Not Harm Criminal Justice Reform.
JOHN VILLASENOR
John Villasenor is a professor of electrical engineering, law, and public policy at UCLA, where he is also the director of the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law, and Policy. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Villasenor’s work considers the technology, legal, and policy issues arising from key technology trends including the growth of artificial intelligence, the increasing complexity and interdependence of today’s networks and systems, and continued advances in computing and communications.
He has written for the Atlantic, Billboard, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Fast Company, Forbes, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Scientific American, Slate, and the Washington Post, as well as many academic journals. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA, Villasenor was with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he developed methods of imaging the earth from space. He holds a B.S. from the University of Virginia and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.
Team Proposal: Privacy Laws Should Help Not Harm Criminal Justice Reform.
MAHMUD FAROOQUE
Mahmud’s work at the ASU Washington Center focuses on making science more democratic and useful. The democratic component leverages a distributed institutional network of academics, educators and analysts for participatory technology assessment (pTA). The useful component engages boundary practitioners at the science and policy interface for reconciling the supply of and demand for scientific information (RSD).
Mahmud is the principal coordinator of Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) – a distributive institutional network that brings together research centers, informal science education centers, citizen science programs and non-partisan policy think tanks to engage citizens on decision-making related to science and technology policy. He led large-scale public deliberation projects on biodiversity, space, climate and energy to support policy and decision-making at the national and global levels. His current public engagement projects involve Climate Change Resilience, Gene Drives, Driverless Cars, Geoengineering, Internet, Human Gene Editing and Public Interest Technology.
Mahmud was the Deputy Director of Policy Programs at the New York Academy of Science, Director of Collaborative Research at City University of New York, Associate Director for Research Development at Northwestern University, and Managing Director of USDOT Research Center at Purdue University.
Mahmud’s expertise focuses on innovation systems, research management, knowledge co-production, policy entrepreneurship, and participatory technology assessment.
NICHOLAS WELLER
Nicholas Weller is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society (SFIS) at Arizona State University (ASU). Through his work, he promotes engagement among scientists, public audiences, policy makers, and cultural organizations. He conducts this work in service of creating a just, free, and sustainable future. He studies the use of deliberative public forums to capture public values and shape science and policy on uncertain, contested, and technical topics. Currently, he works with ASU’s Center for Innovation in Informal STEM Learning (CIISL) to help professionals at museums and other cultural organizations develop sustainability-related programs. He also works with ASU’s Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) to better link science with public values.
MICHELLE SULLIVAN GOVANI
Michelle serves as Director, Strategy and Partnerships, for Arizona State University’s Office of Applied Innovation, an affiliate of the President’s Office that identifies and applies emerging scientific, technological, design, and policy innovations to advance ASU’s teaching and learning mission. The office focuses on improving the economic, social, cultural, and overall health of the communities ASU serves by expanding access to educational and economic opportunity. In her role, Michelle develops and implements best practices for coordinating activities, partnerships, and the team to advance the office’s strategic goals. She also supports the office's team of Student Innovation Analysts in research, analysis, and pursuit of their mission-aligned, mentored projects. In addition, Michelle manages her own portfolio in the office, fostering mutually beneficial partnerships and applying her expertise at the intersection of science, politics, and policy to advance special projects related to the office mission and the ASU charter. Prior to this role, Michelle was a 2019-2020 University Innovation Fellow, serving as a researcher, analyst, project manager, and relationship manager for university leadership. Michelle holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree in Biology (with a concentration in Biology and Society) from Arizona State University, and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Iowa. Michelle remains active in her scholarly fields, and she teaches a Science Policy for Scientists course each spring.
KENNETH R. FLEISCHMANN
Kenneth R. Fleischmann is a Professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin and Founding Chair of Good Systems, a UT Grand Challenge. His research focuses on the ethics of AI, including the role of human values such as transparency, trust, and human agency in the design and use of AI-based technologies. His research has been funded by NSF, IARPA, Microsoft Research, Cisco, Micron Foundation, and the Public Interest Technology University Network and has been published in venues such as JASIST, JMIR, CSCW, CIKM, ASSETS, SocialCom, Computer, and Communications of the ACM. His collaborative research has been awarded the iConference Best Paper Award, the ASIS&T SIG-USE Best Information Behavior Conference Paper Award, the ASIST SIG-SI Social Informatics Best Paper Award, the Civic Futures Award for Designing for the 100%, and the MetroLab Innovation of the Month.
Team Proposal: Ensuring that Governments and Companies Use Ethical and Fair Artificial Intelligence.
SHERRI R. GREENBERG
Sherri R. Greenberg is a Professor of Practice, and a Fellow of the Max Sherman Chair in State and Local Government at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. Also she is the Research Director of the Future of Work for Good Systems, a UT Grand Challenge. Greenberg holds an MSc from the London School of Economics. Her teaching and research interests include: technology policy, AI ethics, elections, housing, transportation, healthcare, and finance and economic development. Her research funding has included Cisco, IBM, Accenture, the Congressional Research Service, and the State of Texas. Greenberg is Chair of the Central Health Board, and a Member of the City of Austin Housing Investment Review Committee. She serves on the Austin Forum on Science and Technology Advisory Board, and the Austin Smart City Alliance Advisory Board. She has been a Senior Advisor to Austin Mayor Steve Adler. Greenberg was a Texas State Representative from 1991 to 2001, and she chaired the House Pensions and Investments Committee and the Select Committee on Teacher Health Insurance, and served on the House Appropriations, Economic Development, Elections, and Science and Technology Committees.
LAURA MOY
Professor Laura Moy is the Director of Georgetown Law’s Communications & Technology Law Clinic, where she and a team of staff attorneys and law students represent nonprofit organizations in a range of technology policy matters before federal agencies. She is also Associate Director of the Center on Privacy & Technology, a small think tank at the law school that conducts research and advocacy on issues at the intersection of technology and civil rights.
As a policy expert, Professor Moy has written, spoken, and advocated before agencies and
Congress on consumer privacy, law enforcement surveillance, data security, device portability, copyright, and net neutrality. Her current research interests include how technology tools are used in the criminal legal system and how consumer privacy protections may be leveraged to ensure private information is not used in ways that perpetuate and exacerbate discrimination and other societal ills.
Prior to coming to Georgetown, Professor Moy worked on technology policy issues at New
America and Public Knowledge. Professor Moy completed her B.A. at the University of
Maryland, her J.D. at New York University School of Law, and her LL.M. at Georgetown.
GABRIELLE REJOUIS
Gabrielle is a Senior Policy Manager on Color Of Change’s Media, Culture, and Economic Justice team. She develops campaigns to challenge anticompetitive practices and to ensure effective regulation of the tech industry. She previously worked at the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law where she advocated for civil rights protections in tech policy and worker privacy protections. Gabrielle received her J.D. from Georgetown Law with a Certificate in Refugee and Humanitarian Emergencies.