Brad Fain, principal research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and at the Center for Advanced Communications Policy (CACP), has been appointed as executive director of CACP. The appointment was announced on January 2, 2019 by Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Dean Jacqueline Royster.

Housed in the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy, CACP focuses on key issues that influence the development, implementation and adoption of communications technologies. CACP work includes assessment of policy issues and production of regulatory filings, identification of future options for innovation, and articulation of a clearer vision of the ever-changing technology landscape. The Center’s research addresses a wide range of advanced communications policy issues and related technology applications, particularly in the wireless and new technology arenas.

Fain brings to bear more than twenty-five years of experience in human performance. He directs Georgia Tech’s HomeLab research initiative and leads a team that is pioneering research into issues and products design to assist with successful aging in place. He joined Georgia Institute of Technology in 1992 and has extensive experience developing technologies, evaluation processes, and curriculum in the field of accessible design. He has also led or assisted in a variety of research programs on the design of fixed and rotary wing crew interfaces, and he currently leads a project to build a virtual reality usability testbed for first responder technologies enabled by FirstNet for the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). He has performed over one hundred accessibility evaluations for national and international customers in twenty projects. He has executed over two hundred consumer product evaluation projects. He pioneered the development of Consumer Product Integration (CPI) as a design process for the realization of products with universal design features.

Fain led the National Council on Disability’s (NCD) universal design research program. The focus of the research program was to determine the impact of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act on the design and procurement of electronic and information technologies. Fain’s report contained universal design policy recommendations that were endorsed by the NCD and sent to the president of the United States for consideration. He conceived and led the development of an information portal containing information pertaining to the design and procurement of accessible electronic and information technologies. The Accessibility Assistant (http://accessibility.gtri.gatech.edu) is the culmination of eight years of accessibility research at Georgia Tech and serves over 1,500 visitors monthly.

Fain has also led the technical portion of the EAC’s Military Heroes Initiative to search for new technologies that would allow recently wounded soldiers to place a private and secure vote. He served as the technical director of the EAC’s Accessible Voting Technology Initiative (AVTI) to develop technologies solutions that facilitate accessible voting for the general population. The AVTI resulted in the development of a voting system test bed used to conduct accessibility research for ballot design and novel hardware design. He also led a NIST research grant to determine best practices for quantifying and certifying the accessibility and usability of new voting systems. Fain served as the technical director for the Information Technology and Technical Assistance Training Center (ITTATC) project. He led the needs assessment and technical assistance portions of the ITTATC project and has developed materials to support accessibility curriculum development efforts. He led the development of the Accessibility Evaluation Facility to support independent third-party evaluations of electronic and information technology accessibility and usability. In addition, he led the development of training materials to educate designers and accessibility specialists in the measurement of accessibility. In 2004, Fain modified the AEM to measure ease of use for special populations and, as a result, GTRI was named as the national test lab for the Arthritis Foundation’s Ease of Use Commendation Program.

Michael Hoffmann is a Professor for Philosophy in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. He is the Director of the Reflect! Lab, Co-Director of ETHICx, the Ethics, Technology, and Human Interaction Center, and he directs the VIP Digital Deliberation. He is doing research in three areas. In political philosophy, he focuses on the question of how democratic institutions should be designed that strengthen democracy. In AI ethics, he works on participatory design for human well-being. And across multiple disciplines he develops methods and collaborative software tools to support deliberation, argumentation, and consensus-building, as well as instruments to assess the skills and dispositions needed for these activities.

Jason Borenstein, Ph.D., is the Director of Graduate Research Ethics Programs and Associate Director of the Center for Ethics and Technology. His appointment is divided between the School of Public Policy and the Office of Graduate Studies. He is also Affiliated Faculty at the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM). Dr. Borenstein is an associate editor of the journal Science and Engineering Ethics, a Founding Editor of the journal AI and Ethics, co-editor of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s Ethics and Information Technology section, and an editorial board member of the journal Accountability in Research. He is also Editor for Research Ethics for the National Academy of Engineering's Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science. He was the Founder and formerly Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Philosophy, Science & Law. Dr. Borenstein’s research interests include bioethics, engineering ethics, robot ethics, and research ethics.

He is currently a Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) on a five-year project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) entitled "Institutional Transformation: The Role of Service Learning and Community Engagement on the Ethical Development of STEM Students and Campus Culture". He is a Co-PI on the NSF-funded “Fairness, Ethics, Accountability, and Transparency (FEAT) in Computer and Information Science and Engineering Workshop” that took place August 29 and 30, 2019 on Georgia Tech's campus. He is also a Co-PI on the NSF-funded project “Do the Right Thing: Competing Ethical Frameworks Mediated by Moral Emotions in Human-robot Interaction" and on the NSF-funded project "EAGER: Pilot Study on Bias and Trust in AI Systems". In addition, he is a Co-PI on the Mozilla Responsible Computer Science Challenge funded project “Cultivating an Ethics-Inclusive Mindset Through Role Play in Undergraduate Computer Science Courses”. His work has appeared in numerous professional journals including AI & Society, Communications of the ACM, Science and Engineering Ethics, Ethics and Information Technology, IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, IEEE Technology & Society Magazine, Accountability in Research, and the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review.

Dr. Borenstein’s teaching and research interests include robot & artificial intelligence ethics, engineering ethics, research ethics/RCR, and bioethics.

Dr. Omar I. Asensio is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the intersection of big data and public policy, with applications to energy systems and consumer behavior, smart cities, and machine learning in transportation and electric mobility. He directs the Data Science and Policy Lab at Georgia Tech, where he collaborates with the private sector and city governments on data innovations in policy analysis and research evaluation. He is a faculty affiliate at the Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS), the Machine Learning Center, and the Strategic Energy Institute. Dr. Asensio’s research has been published in leading journals such as Nature Energy, Nature Sustainability, and PNAS. His work uses statistical and computational tools to advance our understanding of how large-scale civic data and experiments can be used to increase participation in civic processes, while addressing resource conservation and environmental sustainability. Dr. Asensio’s research also has been featured in policy advisory communications by the European Commission, NSF Public Affairs, the World Bank, and national governments — including the U.K., and the IndiaAI initiative.

Dr. Asensio is a member of the New Voices 2021-2023 cohort of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) 40-for-40 fellowship, and the ONE-NBS Research Impact on Practice award by the Organizations and the Natural Environment (ONE) Division of the Academy of Management. Dr. Asensio serves as Associate Editor of Data and Policy journal published by Cambridge University Press. He holds a doctorate in environmental science and engineering from UCLA with field specialties in economics. He is a faculty participant in the Research University Alliance (RUA) Research Exchange and is engaged in multiple activities to increase the representation of women and under-represented students and professionals in STEM fields. 

Aaron D. Levine is Associate Dean for Research and Outreach in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and Professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. He also holds an appointment as a Guest Researcher in the Division of Reproductive Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is a member of the leadership team for the NSF Engineering Research Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies (CMaT), leading ethics and policy research for the center. He seved as Co-Director for CMaT's Engineering Workforce Development activities from 2017 to 2022. His research focuses on the intersection between public policy and bioethics. Much of his work has examined the development of stem cell science, particularly research using human embryonic stem cells, and the translation of novel cell therapies. He also writes extensively on the oversight of contentious areas of medicine, such as assisted reproductive technology. In 2012, he received a NSF CAREER award to examine the impact of ethical controversy on graduate science education and the development of scientific careers.  He serves as Vice-Chair for Bioethics on the International Society for Cell & Genel Therapy’s Committee on the Ethics of Cell and Gene Therapy and recently completed a three-year term as an elected member of the Board of Directors of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. He is also a long-time member of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Aaron has a long-standing interest in science communication and is the author of Cloning: A Beginner's Guide (Oneworld Publications, 2007), an accessible introduction to the science of cloning and embryonic stem cells and the ethical and policy controversies this science inspires. He was an AAAS Leshner Leadership Institute Public Engagement Fellow for 2019-2020. You can follow Aaron on twitter at @aarondlevine.

He completed his Ph.D. in Public Affairs at Princeton University, where his dissertation research examined the impact of public policy on the development of human embryonic stem cell science.  He also holds an M. Phil. from the University of Cambridge, where, as a Churchill Scholar, he studied computational biology at the Sanger Centre and developed algorithms to help analyze the human genome sequence, and a B.S. in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar.