FORC 2022 Keynote Speakers
Caroline Nobo
Monday, June 6th, 9:15am-10:15am EDT
Title: From Theory to Impact: Why Better Data Systems are Necessary for Criminal Legal Reform
Abstract: This talk will dive into the messy, archaic, and siloed world of local criminal justice data in America. We will start with a 30,000 foot discussion about the current state of criminal legal data systems, then transition to the challenges of this broken paradigm, and conclude with a call to measure new things – and to measure them better! This talk will leave you with an understanding of criminal justice data infrastructure and transparency in the US, and will discuss how expensive case management software and other technology are built on outdated normative values which impede efforts to reform the system. The result is an infuriating paradox: an abundance of tech products built without theoretical grounding, in a space rich with research and evidence.
Bio: Caroline Nobo is a Research Scholar in Law and Executive Director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, where she provides strategic direction and leadership to the Justice Collaboratory’s unique network of interdisciplinary scholars and staff.
With 15 years of experience, Caroline is a career criminologist and national expert on criminal justice data and infrastructure. She is a fierce advocate for criminal justice system transparency, and is often featured translating research into policy and practice. Her expertise includes policing, gun violence, community-based research methodologies, and the progressive prosecutor movement.
Nobo’s work has been featured internationally including on Salon.com, the Memory Motel podcasts, and Narativ storytelling workshops. In addition, Caroline sits on the board for a Connecticut non-profit serving incarcerated parents and their children (CLICC) and is a member of her town council’s Ethics Committee.
Prior to joining Yale, Nobo was the Director of Data Outreach for the non-profit Measures for Justice (MJF). She was an original member of the start-up and ultimately became a critical leader in charge of the design, scale, and implementation of MFJ’s national data collection plan. She also worked as a Senior Analyst at Abt Associates in Cambridge, MA, where she specialized in drug control policy research, was the National Site Liaison for the ADAM II program, and worked on several projects with the Executive Office of the White House. She began her career as a Research Assistant at both the University of Pennsylvania’s (PENN) School of Social Policy and Practice and at Arizona State University’s (ASU) Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety.
Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD
Tuesday, June 7th, 9:15am-10:15am EDT
Title: What’s In A Label? The case for and against monolithic group/ethnic/race labeling for machine learning.
Abstract: Populations and group labels have been used and abused for thousands of years. The scale at which AI can incorporate such labels into its models and the ways in which such models can be misused are cause for significant concern. I will describe, with examples drawn from experiments in precision medicine, the task dependence of how underserved and oppressed populations can be both harmed and helped by the use of group labels. The source of the labels and the utility models underlying their use will be particularly emphasized.
Bio: Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD is the inaugural Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics and the Marion V. Nelson Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School. He develops and applies computational techniques to address disease at multiple scales—from whole healthcare systems as “living laboratories” to the functional genomics of neurodevelopment with a focus on autism. Kohane’s i2b2 project is currently deployed internationally to over 120 major academic health centers to drive discovery research in disease and pharmacovigilance (including providing evidence on drugs which ultimately contributed to “boxed warning” by the FDA). Dr. Kohane has published several hundred papers in the medical literature and authored a widely-used book on Microarrays for an Integrative Genomics. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the American Society for Clinical Investigation.
Nuria Oliver
Wednesday, June 8th, 9:15am-10:15am EDT
Title: Data Science against COVID-19
Abstract: In my talk, I will describe the work that I have been doing since March 2020, leading a multi-disciplinary team of 20+ volunteer scientists working very closely with the Presidency of the Valencian Government in Spain on 4 large areas: (1) human mobility modeling; (2) computational epidemiological models (both metapopulation, individual and LSTM-based models); (3) predictive models; and (4) citizen surveys via the COVID19impactsurvey with over 600,000 answers worldwide.
I will describe the results that we have produced in each of these areas, including winning the 500K XPRIZE Pandemic Response Challenge and best paper award at ECML-PKDD 2021. I will share the lessons learned in this very special initiative of collaboration between the civil society at large (through the survey), the scientific community (through the Expert Group) and a public administration (through the Commissioner at the Presidency level). WIRED magazine just published an article describing our story.
Bio: Nuria Oliver is Cofounder and Vicepresident of ELLIS (The European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems), cofounder and Director of the Institute of Human(ity)-centric AI (ELLIS Alicante), Chief Data Scientist at Data-Pop Alliance and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Vodafone Institute. She earned her PhD from MIT. She is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE and EurAI at the same time. She is an elect member at the Royal Academy of Engineering and the only Spanish scientist at SIGCHI Academy.
She has over 25 years of research experience in human-centric AI and is the author of over 180 widely cited scientific articles as well as an inventor of 40+ patents and a public speaker. She has authored the book “Artificial Intelligence, naturally”, in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Digital Society. Her work is regularly featured in the media and has received numerous recognitions, including the Spanish National Computer Science Award, the MIT TR100 (today TR35), Young Innovator Award (first Spanish scientist to receive this award); the Digital European Woman of the Year Award; the Spanish Telecommunications Engineer of the Year award; the 2021 King Jaume I award in New Technologies and the 2021 Abie Technology Leadership Award.
In March of 2020, she was appointed Commissioner to the President of the Valencian Government on AI Strategy and Data Science against COVID-19. In that role, she co-led ValenciaIA4COVID, the winning team of the 500k XPRIZE Pandemic Response Challenge. Their work was featured in WIRED, Politico and MSNBC, among other media.
Twitter: @nuriaoliver
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