Joy Buolamwini

Joy Buolamwini graduated as a Stamps President’s Scholar from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012, having been recognized as the youngest finalist of the Georgia Tech InVenture Prize in 2009 for her health informatics research. She continued her academic journey as a Rhodes Scholar, Fulbright Fellow, and Stamps Scholar, earning a Master’s Degree in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT in 2017 and later a PhD in Media Arts & Sciences from the MIT Media Lab in 2022, where her doctoral research focused on ‘Facing the Coded Gaze with Evocative Audits and Algorithmic Audits.’ Her early professional engagements included developing an Android-based assessment system for the Carter Center’s trachoma program in Ethiopia in 2011 and collaborating with computer scientists in Zambia as a Fulbright fellow in 2013 to empower young people in technology. While a researcher at the MIT Media Lab, Buolamwini made a significant discovery that facial recognition software struggled to accurately identify darker-skinned women. This pivotal finding led to her landmark 2018 paper, ‘Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification,’ which rigorously demonstrated significantly higher error rates in commercial facial analysis systems for women and darker-skinned individuals.

Buolamwini continues to be a leading voice advocating for biometric rights and the ethical development of AI, emphasizing the crucial need for technology to serve all of humanity fairly.