Speakers
Share insights with global leaders in technology, public policy, government, and academic efforts to develop and deploy
solutions for these pressing societal challenges.
See the program for the timing of individual panels if attending in person or watching online live. Registered participants can view a recording of the session at their convenience during October 2023. Workshops, public policy, standards, posters, demos and networking session are only available in-person.
Yael Eisenstat
VP, ADL Center for Tech and Society
Yaёl Eisenstat is a Vice President at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), where she heads the Center for Technology and Society. She leads ADL’s effort to hold tech companies accountable for the proliferation of hate, harassment and extremism on their platforms.
Yaёl joined ADL in October 2022 after spending more than two decades protecting our democracy – including as an intelligence officer, diplomat, and White House advisor.
She joined Facebook in 2018 as the head of global elections integrity for political ads, following several years as a vocal critic of the harms that social media has inflicted on democracy and societies worldwide. After leaving Facebook six months later, she spoke openly about the company’s inability to meet its responsibility to secure elections, and she has continued to push for changes in the tech industry.
Yaёl also served as senior advisor at the Institute for Security and Technology, a Future of Democracy Fellow at Berggruen Institute.
Panel: Hate Speech
David Matas
International Human Rights Lawyer
David Matas is an international human rights lawyer. He is a graduate of the Universities of Manitoba, Princeton and Oxford. He has taught at the Universities of Manitoba and McGill. He is the author of twelve books on a variety of human rights subjects.
He served as a member of the Canadian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Conference on an International Criminal Court, the Canadian Delegation to the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, a Co-Chair of the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism, and as a member of the Canadian Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
In 2007 David was awarded the Order of Canada and in 2012 he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.
Panel: Hate Speech
Nicholas Rasmussen
DHS Counterterrorism Coordinator Taskforce Director
Reporting to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as DHS CT Coordinator Nicholas Rasmussen is the Department’s most senior official charged with coordinating counterterrorism-related activities.
A national security professional with more than 27 years in U.S. government service, Rasmussen held senior counterterrorism posts at the White House and in the U.S. Intelligence Community from 2001 to 2017. He concluded his government career as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), leading more than 1,000 professionals from across the Intelligence Community, federal government, and federal contractor workforce.
Rasmussen served in senior posts across three administrations, including as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council staff under Presidents Bush and Obama before being appointed Director of NCTC by President Obama and continuing his tenure at the request of President Trump’s administration.
Panel: Extremism & Exploitation
Nathalie Japkowicz
Professor and Department Chair, Department of Computer Science, American University
Nathalie Japkowicz is a Professor of Computer Science and head of the Department of Computer Science at American University. She is one of the leads of the interdisciplinary Unmasking Antisemitism project at American University.
She was previously with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Ottawa where she lead the Laboratory for Research on Machine Learning for Defense and Security.
Over the years, she has supervised over thirty graduate students, received funding from Canadian Federal and Provincial institutions (NSERC, DRDC, Health Canada, OCE, MITACS CITO), worked with private companies (Girih, Larus Technologies, Weather Telematics, TechInsights, Ciena) and published over 100 articles, papers and books including Evaluating Learning Algorithms: A Classification Perspective, with Mohak Shah (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Big Data Analysis: New Algorithms for a New Society, with Jerzy Stefanowski (Springer, 2016).
Panel: Hate Speech
Kate Hannah
Director and Founder, The Disinformation Project Aotearoa
Kate Hannah is the Director and founder of The Disinformation Project Aotearoa, a research organisation which has studied misinformation and disinformation in Aotearoa New Zealand since February 2020.
Hannah is a cultural historian of science and technology whose research explores information disorders and the impacts of racism, misogyny, and the far right on socio-political discourse. She is an experienced advisor to government, NGOs, civil society organisations and firms with a prime focus on evidence-informed decision-making. An expert in the analysis of disinformation and its impact in Aotearoa New Zealand, she regularly provides media commentary and speaks to organisations and the public about disinformation impacts. In 2021, she was one of the Te Pūnaha Matatini-led team who were awarded the Prime Minister’s Science Prize for work which supported New Zealand’s science-led Covid-19 response.
Tom Thorley
Director of Technology, Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT)
Tom Thorley is the Director of Technology at the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) and delivers cross-platform technical solutions for GIFCT members.
He worked for over a decade at the British government’s signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, where Tom specialized in issues at the nexus of technology and human behavior. Tom spent five years working in the US Government, Military and Intelligence agencies to coordinate intergovernmental relationships and providing expert consultancy on cyber issues, disinformation, technology strategy and operational planning. Prior to his deployment to the US, Tom built and operationalized Data Science teams to inform operations and discover threats, particularly focused on counter-terrorism.
As a passionate advocate for responsible technology, Tom a member of the board of the SF Bay Area Internet Society Chapter is a mentor with All Tech Is Human and Coding It Forward and also volunteers with America On Tech and DataKind.
Panel: Extremism & Exploitation
Arjun Narayan
Head of Trust and Safety, SmartNews
Arjun is a senior Industry leader with over two decades of experience in the online safety, digital sustainability, privacy, and security related domains. Arjun leads the Operations and Service Integrity group at Smart News, the team responsible for keeping the SmartNews platform safe, inclusive, and objective while maintaining high ethical standards. Arjun has previously worked at leading tech firms including GE, American Express, Google, and Tiktok. Arjun is also a start up mentor and advisor with special interest in media integrity and ethical AI.
Vidhya Ramalingam
Founder and CEO of Moonshot
Vidhya Ramalingam is Founder and CEO of Moonshot, a company working to end online harms applying evidence, ethics and human rights. Under her leadership, Moonshot has pioneered new partnerships with tech companies to respond to hate and violent extremism on their platforms, online intervention programs to pull individuals out of violent movements, and the use of automated messaging to disrupt hate groups online. In 2022, Moonshot was named to Fast Company’s prestigious annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies. Vidhya is also recognized internationally for her role leading policy responses to white supremacist extremism and terrorism. Following the 2011 attacks in Norway, she led the European Union’s first inter-governmental initiative on white supremacist terrorism and extremism, initiated by the Governments of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands, and launched by the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs. She regularly advises Big Tech and Heads of State.
Panel: Extremism & Exploitation
Dr. Joel Finkelstein
Chief Science Officer and Co-Founder, Network Contagion Research Institute
Joel Finkelstein is the co-founder and chief science officer of the Network Contagion Research Institute, which deploys machine learning tools to expose the growing tide of hate and extremism on social media. He is a graduate of Princeton University, where his award winning, doctoral work focused on the Psychology and Neuroscience of addiction and social behavior. He currently directs the Network Contagion Lab, at the Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience at Rutgers University where he trains the next generation of students in the field of critical intelligence, social-cyber threat identification, and threat forecasting. His work on hate in social media has appeared in 60 minutes, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, NPR and other media outlets.
Panel: Hate Speech
Katharina Schueller
CEO, STAT-UP GmbH and Member of the Board, German Statistical Society
Katharina is one of the leading experts in data and AI Literacy and ethics. She advises the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research on the “Digital Education Initiative” and the “Data Culture and Data Literacy Roadmap” and is a permanent member of the German Government’s Digital Summit.
Katharina is WG Chair of IEEE P7015 Standard for Data & AI Literacy. In 2022, she led the development of the MOOC “Data-informed decision making in a pandemic” for the Federation of National European Statistical Societies, to support evidence-based decision making in politics. The course was presented at the Conference of European Statistical Stakeholders CESS in October 2022 in Rome and is nominated for the ISLP Best Cooperative Project Award in Statistical Literacy.
Katharina has received numerous awards, e.g. “Vordenker” (Handelsblatt/BCG), “TopVoice” (LinkedIn), Digital Female Leader Award and many more, and is a member of various advisory boards in business, science and politics.
Rebecca Portnoff
Director of Data Science, Thorn
Dr. Rebecca Portnoff has dedicated her career to building and designing tools and techniques to seek out and help child victims of sexual abuse.
She heads Thorn’s strategy and vision for Data Science across the organization, working collaboratively with Product, Engineering and UX senior leadership to build and deploy machine learning/artificial intelligence to accelerate victim identification and the removal of CSAM (child sexual abuse material) from the open web.
She brings over a decade of experience in scientific research, machine learning and analytics, and several years as a trauma-informed people leader. Her product portfolio consists of mission-driven machine learning/artificial intelligence. She holds a B.S.E. in Computer Science from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
Public Policy Session
Massimo Pellegrino
IEEE European Public Policy Program Manager
Based at the IEEE Global Office in Vienna, Austria, Massimo Pellegrino is in charge of IEEE’s European based technology policy initiatives.
Prior to joining IEEE he served as researcher on emerging security and technology matters at the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), and prior to that he directed the work of the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) in the area of outer space and security-related issues.
Mr Pellegrino has been a lecturer at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) and at the European Security and Defence College (ESDC). He is also an author of several papers, reports and policy briefs on outer space and security matters.
Mr Pellegrino received a Master’s Degree in Space Studies from the International Space University (ISU), as well as a Master’s Degree in Economics, and a Master’s and a Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial and Technology Engineering from the University of Naples Federico II.
Public Policy Session
Mike Hinchey
Chair, IEEE Global Public Policy Committee
Mike Hinchey is Professor of Software Engineering at University of Limerick (Ireland), Chair of the IEEE’s Global Public Policy Committee, President of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), and a member of the IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors. Hinchey previously served as Director of the NASA Software Engineering Laboratory. He was awarded NASA’s Kerley Award as Innovator of the Year and is one of only 36 people inducted into the NASA Inventors Hall of Fame. He holds a BSc in Computer Systems from the University of Limerick, an MSc in Computation from the University of Oxford, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.
Public Policy Session
Rosalie Atie
Project Lead, National Anti-Racism Framework, Race Discrimination team, Australian Human Rights Commission
Dr. Rosalie Atie is Project Lead on the Australian Government-funded and Australian Human Rights Commission-led National Anti-Racism Framework. One of the priority actions in progressing the Framework involves work to address media standards and regulation with respect to online hate. Whilst online platforms often provide opportunities to foster positive and inclusive spaces, they are also often a space where misinformation, racism, and dehumanisation occur. Participants in the scoping process for a Framework called for governments to explore law and policy reforms that ensure anti-racism standards for the media industry are community-informed, enforced, and independently monitored, as well as establish adequate moderation and regulation mechanisms across platforms to better protect individuals and communities from racially based online hate.
Panel: Hate Speech
Berhan Taye
IEEE TechEthics Global Ambassador
Berhan Taye is an IEEE TechEthics Global Ambassador, and an independent researcher, analyst, and facilitator who investigates the relationship between technology, society, and social justice. She is currently a Practitioner Fellow at the Digital Civil Society Lab, Stanford University and has affiliations with the Center for Intellectual Property and IT at Strathmore University. Berhan also serves as a Senior Advisor at Internews’ Global Internet Freedom Project.
Workshop Session
Andre Oboler
CEO, Online Hate Prevention Institute, Australia
Dr. Andre Oboler is CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Institute, honorary associate in the La Trobe Law School, a member of the IEEE’s Global Public Policy Committee, an IEEE TechEthics Global Ambassador, and an Australian Government Delegate to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). He is a consultant to companies, governments, and civil society organisations on hate speech, radicalization, and disinformation. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Lancaster University (UK), and a first class honours degree in computer science and LLM (Juris Doctor) from Monash University (Australia).
Opening, Public Policy, & Workshop Session
Ye Bin
Georgetown University
Ye Bin is a masters candidate at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program studying digital extremist communities. Prior to her masters program, she worked at Moonshot, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, and the Georgetown Security Studies Program (SSP). Her work primarily examines how extremist groups conceptualize and perform race and gender, specifically in Christian nationalist and male supremacist circles. Her recent research also looks at the participation of extremist parent content creators. Ye Bin has shared her work at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit, GNET, the Canada Centre, and more.
Panel: Extremism & Exploitation
Adam Hadley
Founder and Executive Director of Tech Against Terrorism
Adam Hadley is the Founder and Executive Director of Tech Against Terrorism, a public-private partnership established as an initiative of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED). Tech Against Terrorism has since been recognised by the UN Security Council for enabling the global tech sector in tackling the terrorist use of the internet while respecting human rights.
Adam is also the CEO of London-based data science consultancy QuantSpark, and leads teams of data scientists and developers to derive insight from big data and develop analytical tools to solve strategic problems for government and private-sector clients. Adam has an academic background in combining approaches from computer science and counter-terrorism to analyse terrorist propaganda.
Panel: Extremism & Exploitation
Rahman
IEEE President & CEO
Prof. Saifur Rahman is the 2023 President and CEO of the IEEE. He is founding director of the Advanced Research Institute at Virginia Tech, USA, and the Joseph R. Loring Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also directs the Center for Energy and the Global Environment at the university. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE and an IEEE Millennium Medal winner.
He is the founding editor-in-chief of the IEEE Electrification Magazine and the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy. He has published more than 160 journal papers and has made more than 500 conference and invited presentations. His h-index is 60 with over 18,000 citations. He has lectured on renewable energy, energy efficiency, smart grid, energy internet, blockchain, and IoT sensor integration in more than 30 countries.
He served as the chair of the US National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for International Science and Engineering from 2010 to 2013. He has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech.
Dinner speaker
Vicky Wilkins
Acting Provost, American University
Prof. Vicky M. Wilkins is Acting Provost of American University, Dean of the School of Public Affairs and Professor of Public Administration and Policy at American University.
Her primary research interests include representative bureaucracy; bureaucratic discretion; gender and race issues; deservingness; political institutions and human resource management. Her research appears in the American Political Science Review, Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Governance, Review of Public Personnel Administration, Administration & Society, Policy Studies Journal, and Legislative Studies Quarterly.
Vicky earned her BS in Political Science and History from Northern Michigan University, her MS in Human Resource Management from Chapman University, and her PhD in political science from the University of Missouri.
Opening session
Annette Reilly
Vice President (Standards), IEEE Computer Society & Standards Board Member, IEEE Standards Association
Dr. Annette Reilly is the IEEE Computer Society’s Vice President for Standards and a member of the IEEE Standards Association’s Standards Board. She serves as the IEEE Computer Society’s Representative to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC7, Systems and Software Engineering, overseeing joint development of over 35 active ISO/IEC/IEEE standards. She is project lead, editor, or co-editor for a dozen standards.
Reilly retired from a 31-year career at Lockheed Martin, where she held responsibilities for proposal and engineering management, systems engineering, and technical documentation. She developed technical and management solutions and proposals for major ITC domestic and international government customers. She is a past President of the Society for Technical Communication. Dr. Reilly received a B.A., Rice University; M.A. and Ph.D. (English), Brandeis University; and MIS, The George Washington University. She is an ACM Life Member, PMP, CSDP, CSEP-ACQ and INCOSE member, ASME member, and STC Fellow.
Standards Session
Luis Kun
President, IEEE Society for Social Implications of Technology (SSIT)
Prof. Luis Kun is President of the IEEE Society for Social Implications of Technology (SSIT). He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the CHDS at the National Defense University and a biomedical engineer that worked at the intersection of Healthcare, Public Health, IT and National Security in Industry, Government and Academia.
He worked for 14 years for IBM, Director of Medical Systems Technology and Strategic Planning for Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Senior IT Advisor for the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research and later a Distinguished Fellow for the CDC where he was the Senior Computer Scientist for Bioterrorism and later the Acting Chief Information Technology Officer for the National Immunization Program and an Adjunct Professor of Public Health Informatics at Emory University School of Public Health.
He graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy in Uruguay and received a BSEE, a MSEE and a Ph.D. in BME from UCLA.
Dinner speaker
Kim Blakenship
Associate Dean of Research, College of Arts & Sciences, American University
Kim M. Blankenship, PhD, is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology, Founding Director of the Center on Health, Risk and Society, Associate Dean of Research in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Co-Director of the Developmental Core of the District of Columbia Center for AIDS Research (DC CFAR).
She previously served on the faculty of Sociology at Duke University and at the Duke Global Health Institute (2008-2010) and on the faculty at Yale University, where she was also Associate Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (1998-2008). Research and publications focus on the social determination of health inequities and structural interventions to address them. She has received funding from NIDA, NIMH, CDC, Russell Sage Foundation (RSF) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). She leads the Inequality, Social Justice and Health Lab at American University.
Opening session
Ilyse Hogue
Partner, Purpose
Ilyse Hogue is a Partner at Purpose where she supports a global team and steers strategic planning and development. A trained ecologist, she approaches social change from a systems perspective, applying knowledge and capacity to address emerging threats.
She previously served for eight-year as president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, and before that worked for MoveOn.org, Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, Media Matters for America, and the Friends of Democracy PAC. In 2020, she co-authored the best-selling book, The Lie That Binds, on the history of the radical right, its authoritarian aims, and its reliance on white supremacy, misogyny and disinformation. Her commentary has been featured in The Washington Post, HuffPost, The Nation, Cosmopolitan, and ELLE. She regularly appears as a pundit on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR.
She holds a BA from Vassar College, an MS from the University of Michigan, and was named as one of the 10 Most Powerful Women in Washington DC by Elle Magazine.
Diana Burley
Vice Provost for Research and Innovation, American University
Diana L. Burley, Ph.D., is Vice Provost for Research at American University and where she is also Professor of Public Administration and Policy and Professor of IT & Analytics.
Named one of SC Magazine’s Eight Women in IT Security to Watch in 2017 and the 2017 SC Magazine ReBoot awardee for educational leadership in IT security, Dr. Burley is a cybersecurity expert who regularly conducts cybersecurity training for executives across North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East on managing cybersecurity risk, assessing the threat environment, and strengthening organizational cybersecurity posture.
She has testified before Congress, is a member of the US National Academies Board on Human-Systems Integration, and an affiliated researcher with the Cyber Operations Group of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. She has written over 90 publications on cybersecurity, information sharing, and IT-enabled change; including her 2014 co-authored book “Enterprise Software Security: A Confluence of Disciplines.”
Day 2 Opening