Polymathic Pizza: "It Figures" - Interrogating Biases in Emerging Technology

Maja Matarić is the Chan Soon-Shiong Chair and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, with appointments in Neuroscience, and Pediatrics at the University of Southern California (USC), and a Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind. She is the founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center (rasc.usc.edu), co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab, past interim Vice President of Research (Jan 2020-Jul 2021), past Vice Dean for Research (Jul 2006-Dec 2019), and past President of the USC faculty and the Academic Senate (2005-06). 

She received her PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from MIT in 1994, MS in Computer Science from MIT in 1990, and BS in Computer Science from the University of Kansas in 1987. 

She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AMACAD), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), IEEE, AAAI, and ACM, and recipient of the US Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) from President Obama. She also received the Okawa Foundation, NSF Career, the MIT TR35 Innovation, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career, and the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Innovation Awards. Within USC, she received the Provost's Mentoring Award, the Viterbi John O'Brien Service Award, the Viterbi School Service Award, and the Viterbi Junior Research Awards. She is featured in the documentary movie "Me & Isaac Newton." One of the most highly cited researchers (Google Scholar profile), she has published extensively, and is an advisory editor of three major journals. 

Prof. Matarić has lead many efforts in K-12 STEM outreach, including founding and leading the USC Viterbi K-12 STEM Center , developing free curricular materials for elementary and middle-school robotics courses, and co-leading two consecutive NSF Research Experience for Teachers sites for over a decade. A pioneer of the field of socially assistive robotics, her Interaction Lab's research is aimed at endowing machines with the ability to provide users with personalized motivation and support to empower them to reach their potential. Her lab's research focuses on users with differences, including children on the autism spectrum, stroke patients, dementia patients, and students and adults with anxiety or depression, among others. 

An interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersections of communication, journalism studies, media studies, and science and technology studies, Ananny traces how technologies and cultures of media production have the power to shape public life.  He is an associate professor of communication and journalism at USC Annenberg. Working across communication, journalism studies, media studies, and science and technology studies, he sees the future of public life in the practices, assumptions, and controversies driving social media platforms, data infrastructures, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.

He is also on the faculty advisory committee of USC’s Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life and co-leads the interdisciplinary research collective “MASTS” (Media as SocioTechnical Systems). He was a 2019-2021 faculty fellow with USC’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities, a 2018-19 Berggruen fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and has held fellowships and scholarships with Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Harvard’s Berkman-Klein Center on Internet and Society, Stanford’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, LEGO, and Interval Research. He was a founding member of Media Lab Europe, a postdoc with Microsoft Research’s Social Media Collective, and has consulted for LEGO, Mattel, and Nortel Networks.

His PhD is from Stanford University (communication), SM from the MIT Media Lab (media arts and sciences), and BSc from the University of Toronto (human biology and computer science).