Technology, Media, and Society: How it all Connects
Live From Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute Webinar
With Profs. Ron Brachman, Mor Naaman, and Nicola Dell, and Ph.D. candidate Hana Matatov
Digital platforms and technology — from Facebook and mobile phones to Zoom and virtual reality to online recommendations and shopping —now serve as the core fabric of our lives and our society, with consequences that are not always positive.
Join our Live From Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute webinar to hear how the Connective Media Hub is building new human-centered technologies with a blend of technical expertise, human-centered design, and a mission to create positive social outcomes. Professor Ron Brachman, director of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute and a professor of computer science at Cornell University, will introduce Prof. Naaman, the hub director. Prof. Naaman will describe hub activities, including his own group’s work on Technology, Media, and Democracy, and specifically on how we can improve the trustworthiness of our information ecosystem to support our democratic society’s needs.
You will also hear from Assistant Professor Nicola Dell, an expert in human-computer interaction, who focuses on computer security and privacy for victims of intimate partner violence. And Hana Matatov, a doctoral candidate in data science and image retrieval, will talk about her research on using advanced computer vision tools to understand and detect the spread of visual misinformation — images and visual content meant to manipulate and deceive — in published and online images.
Featured Speakers
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Mor Naaman is the founding director of the Connective Media Hub at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, an information science professor at Cornell Tech, and an occasional consultant for startups. His lab studies social systems with a focus on topics related to technology, media, and democracy, including the trustworthiness of our information ecosystem. Previously, he earned his Ph.D. from Stanford, led a research team at Yahoo!, and played professional basketball in Israel’s top-tier professional league, the Israeli Basketball Premier League.
Ron Brachman is the Director of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute and a computer science professor at Cornell University. His research focuses on artificial intelligence with a specialization in the area of knowledge representation and reasoning. He earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Princeton University, and his master’s and Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Harvard University. Previously, he built a research career at world-leading institutions including Bell Labs, AT&T Labs, DARPA, and Yahoo Labs.
Nicola Dell is an assistant professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and at Cornell University, focusing her research on human-computer interaction and information technologies. An expert in protecting the digital privacy of domestic violence victims, she has worked with New York City officials to create technology that detects spyware used by abusers to keep track of their partners. Since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, she has been leading an interdisciplinary team in developing technological tools to ease the burdens of home health aides. Prof. Dell received her bachelor’s degree from the University of East Anglia, and her master’s and doctoral degrees in computer science and engineering from the University of Washington.
Hana Matatov is a doctoral candidate at both the Technion and the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute. Her main research topics are data science and image retrieval in the context of visual misinformation. Extremely relevant in this tech-savvy, highly-politicized era, her work deals with detecting published and online images that have been manipulated by photoshopping, splicing, or other techniques. She earned a dual bachelor’s degree in information systems engineering, and in economics, at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion.
ABOUT THE JOAN & JACOBS TECHNION-CORNELL INSTITUTE
The Jacobs Institute fosters radical experimentation at the intersection of research, education, and entrepreneurship. Established jointly by Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, our mission is to transform key industries through technological innovation, deep-tech startups, and uniquely skilled talent.
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