Speakers are listed in alphabetical order. This list may be updated as additional speakers are confirmed.
Keynote Speakers
Meeyoung Cha
Associate Professor, KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
Meeyoung Cha is an associate professor at the School of Computing in KAIST, and Chief Investigator at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Korea. Dr. Cha’s research is on data science and information science with an emphasis on modeling socially-relevant information propagation processes. Her work, on misinformation, poverty mapping, fraud detection, and long-tail content, has gained more than 14,000 citations and received best paper awards at several conferences. Dr. Cha has served as a program co-chair for ICWSM2015 and Big Event at WWW2020, and currently is on the editorial board of PeerJ and ACM Transactions on Social Computing. In 2015-2016, Dr. Cha worked at Facebook’s Data Science Team as a Visiting Professor. She is the recipient of the Young Information Scientist Award in Korea.
Claire Wardle
US Director, First Draft
Claire Wardle currently leads the strategic direction and research for First Draft. In 2017 she co-authored the report, Information Disorder: An interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policy for the Council of Europe, which attempted to provide some definitional structure to the emerging field. Previous to that she was a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, the Research Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and head of social media for the United Nations Refugee Agency. She was also the project lead for the BBC Academy in 2009, where she designed a comprehensive training program for social media verification for BBC News that was rolled out across the organization. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania.
Invited Speakers
Nicholas Diakopoulos
Associate Professor in Communication Studies and Computer Science at Northwestern University
Nicholas Diakopoulos is an Associate Professor in Communication Studies and Computer Science (by courtesy) at Northwestern University where he directs the Computational Journalism Lab. His research focuses on computational journalism, including aspects of automation and algorithms in news production, algorithmic accountability and transparency, and social media in news contexts. He is author of the award-winning book, Automating the News: How Algorithms are Rewriting the Media, published by Harvard University Press in 2019. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Cristian Canton Ferrer
Head of Facebook’s AI Red Team
Cristian Canton is the Research Manager of the AI Red Team at Facebook AI, which focuses on understanding weaknesses and vulnerabilities derived from the use (or misuse) of AI, related to misinformation, election interference and, in general, any area that compromises the integrity of the company. In the past, he managed the computer vision team within the objectionable and harmful content domain (i.e. detect and remove all the bad visual content in Facebook). From 2012-16, he was at Microsoft Research in Redmond (USA) and Cambridge (UK); from 2009-2012, he was at Vicon (Oxford), bringing CV to produce visual effects for the cinema industry. He got his PhD and MS from Technical University of Catalonia (Barcelona) and his MS Thesis from EPFL (Switzerland) on computer vision topics.
Sam Gregory
Program Director, WITNESS
Sam Gregory is an award-winning technologist, media-maker, and human rights advocate, and Program Director of WITNESS (witness.org) which helps people use video and technology to protect and defend human rights. With a focus on new forms of misinformation and disinformation as well as innovations in preserving trust and authenticity he leads WITNESS’s work on Emerging Threats and Opportunities including work on deep fakes, authenticity infrastructure and new opportunities such as livestreamed and co-present storytelling for action. He co-chairs the Partnership on AI’s Expert Group on AI and the Media, and is a member of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court and the US Board of First Draft.Quoted in major media worldwide, he has spoken at Davos and the White House and was a 2010 Rockefeller Bellagio resident on the future of video in activism and a 2012-17 Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. He has published in Journal of Human Rights Practice, Information, Communication and Society, Fiber Culture, and American Anthropologist, and was lead editor of ‘Video for Change’. A graduate of Oxford University and the Harvard Kennedy School, from 2010-2018 he taught the first graduate level course at Harvard on participatory media and human rights.
Baybars Örsek
Director of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at The Poynter Institute
Baybars Örsek is the director of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at The Poynter Institute, the premier global coalition of fact-checking organizations. Prior to joining IFCN, Örsek had served as the founding executive director of the Turkish fact-checking organization Doğruluk Payı between 2014 and 2019.
Omar Wasow
Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University
Omar Wasow is an Assistant Professor in Princeton’s Department of Politics. His research focuses on race and politics, protest movements and statistical methods. Before joining the academy, Omar served as a regular on-air technology analyst and was the co-founder of BlackPlanet.com, a social network he helped grow to over three million active users. In 2003, he helped found a high performing K-8 charter school in Brooklyn. He is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. He received a PhD from Harvard University and a BA from Stanford University.
Fabiana Zollo
Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics, and Statistics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Fabiana Zollo received her PhD in Computer, Decision, and Systems Science from IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca in 2016. Since 2018 she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics, and Statistics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where she works in the Laboratory of Data & Complexity and is fellow member of the Center for Humanities and Social Change. Dr. Zollo’s research interests are focused on the dynamics of information diffusion and production online. Her results have been published on renowned international journals, widely covered by national and international media, and largely disseminated.
Panelists (How do we make online news systems trustworthy?)
Ashish Jaiman
Director of Technology and Operations in Customer Security and Trust, Microsoft
Ashish is the Director of Technology and Operations in the Customer Security and Trust organization at Microsoft, focusing on the Defending Democracy Program. Ashish’s mission is to help customers to improve their security posture and defend against cyber-attacks. Ashish led the Microsoft AccountGuard service, which provides customers with additional monitoring and notification against nation-state attacks. Ashish is currently working on disinformation defense and deepfakes intervention strategy and its impact on society and democracy. Ashish has led US Startup and ISV business, with the team of technical and business evangelists, to recruit startups and ISVs on Microsoft platform.
Mandy Jenkins
General Manager of The Compass Experiment and Board of Directors, Online News Association
Mandy is General Manager of The Compass Experiment, a partnership between Google and McClatchy to explore sustainable business models for local news. Compass has launched two digital-only local news operations: Mahoning Matters, in Youngstown, Ohio in October of 2019 and The Longmont Leader in Longmont, Colorado in May 2020. Prior to her Compass, Mandy was a 2019 John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University, where she studied the disconnection between disinformation consumers and mainstream news. She has served in leadership roles at Storyful and Digital First Media’s Project Thunderdome and has driven innovative digital journalism projects within The Huffington Post Politics, TBD.com, The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Mandy is on the Board of Directors for the Online News Association and News Leaders Association.
Patricia Lopez
Star Tribune Newspaper (Minneapolis, MN, USA)
Patricia Lopez joined the editorial board of the Star Tribune in 2016 and writes about national and state politics, including Congress, tax policy, budgets, immigration, guns, criminal justice, trade, and elections. Patricia was the political editor from 2009 to 2016, directing coverage for the Star Tribune’s Washington, D.C. and State Capitol bureaus, including the Legislature, the Minnesota congressional delegation and elections. Previously she was the Star Tribune’s chief political writer, covering state government, budget and tax policy and U.S. Senate and gubernatorial elections. Patricia can be heard frequently offering political analysis on the Playing Politics podcast, a joint venture between the Star Tribune Editorial Board and WCCO-AM. Ms. Lopez previously worked at the Cincinnati Enquirer, Roanoke Times, Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times.
Antonio Teixeira
Product Manager, YouTube News
Antonio Teixeira is the Product Manager for News on YouTube, focusing on raising authoritative news content across the platform. Prior to joining YouTube, he worked on Google’s advertising product area, spanning both policy and product management roles. He holds a BS and MS in computer science from Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal).
Jonathan Stray
Research Fellow, Partnership on AI (Moderator)
Jonathan Stray is a research fellow at the Partnership on AI, focussing on recommender systems and the societal effects of personalized information. He teaches the dual masters degree in computer science and journalism at Columbia University and has both reported data-driven stories and built software for investigative journalism. Previously he was an editor at the Associated Press, a journalist at ProPublica, and a research scientist at Adobe Systems. Jonathan holds an MSc in Computer Science from the University of Toronto and an MA in Journalism from the University of Hong Kong.
Panelists (How do we address the ‘community’ in solutions for online public health?)
Julie Levison
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Julie Levison MD, MPhil, MPH, FACP is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is co-Director of the Community Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital Chelsea HealthCare Center where she is also a practicing infectious diseases physician specialist. She received her MD from Harvard Medical School, completed an internal medicine/primary care residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Infectious Diseases fellowship in the MGH/BWH program. Dr. Levison runs an NIH-funded research program in the MGH Division of General Internal Medicine and Mongan Institute focused on understanding and addressing disparities in outcomes for infectious diseases with attention to HIV/AIDS and Zika infection. Dr. Levison was a recipient of the El Planeta “Powermeter Award” (Top 100 individuals for Latinos in Massachusetts) and the Harvard Medical School Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism in Medicine Award. She is a member of the Latinx Expert Panel for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases COVID-19 Vaccine Prevention Network.
Sarah Hess
Technical Officer, Global Infectious Hazards Preparedness at World Health Organization
Bio TBA
Kara Laney
Senior Program Officer, National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine
Kara Laney is a senior program officer with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She directs the National Academies’ Based On Science project that counters online misinformation related to science and health. She also manages committees of subject matter experts to write consensus reports that respond to science policy questions. Many of her reports have focused around agricultural biotechnology.
Ifeoma Ozoma
Founder and Principal of Earthseed
Ifeoma Ozoma is the Founder and Principal of Earthseed, a consulting firm supporting individuals, organizations, and companies on issues relating to public policy, health misinformation, and related communications. In her past public policy work, Ifeoma led global public policy partnerships, public policy related content safety development, and US Federal, State, and International policymaker engagement at Pinterest, Facebook, and Google.
Ifeoma’s health misinformation initiatives have been lauded by the World Health Organization, the Washington Post’s Editorial Board, and the New York Times. Ifeoma received the Healthy Corporate Citizen Award for extraordinary commitment to addressing the determinants of health from the Public Health Association of British Columbia in 2019. In 2020, she presented at The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Health Misinformation Symposium and regularly presents her work in global gatherings from Geneva to Singapore.
Leila Zia
Director, Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation
Leila Zia is the Director and Head of Research at the Wikimedia Foundation, the foundation that operates Wikipedia and its sister projects. She manages a team of research scientists working on three areas of research: addressing knowledge gaps, improving knowledge integrity, and building the foundations for a stronger research community around the Wikimedia projects. She received her PhD from Stanford University in Management Science and Engineering. She has served as the general chair of The Web Conference 2019 and is currently a Program Committee Chair of The Web Conference 2021.