Creating Inclusive Public Policies: Guidelines for Compassionate Regulators

Why are some government policies more inclusive than others, striving to benefit all citizens and not just a select few? “We believe that a policy’s success largely rests on how well inclusion is embedded in its blueprints,” write Santosh K. Misra and Raghuram Iyengar in this opinion piece.

• Marketing

Estimating COVID Intervention Effectiveness with ‘Censored’ Testing

In its COVID-19 Rapid-Response research project, Hamsa Bastani's team focused on the use of proxy methods to generate more accurate infection estimates. She explains how her team calculated that Pennsylvania's COVID-19 positive test rate is actually about 60% higher than is publicly reported.

• Operations Information and Decisions

Behind the Buzzwords- Big Data

The first academic reference to Big Data came in a paper written in 2003 by Francis Diebold. He explains how he was inspired by George Orwell’s Big Brother when he first used the term, as the data we now generate is being collected with every click we make.

• Economics
• Finance
• Statistics

Kristian Lum on ACM ByteCast

Kristian Lum discusses her transition from math and statistics into computer science, and how her lab work in bioinformatics expanded her interest into social issues on this episode of ACM ByteCast..

Iranian, American health experts share coronavirus experiences in rare talk

The coronavirus crisis and the move to online events presented Penn’s Middle East Center with a rare opportunity to foster the first public conversation about the virus between senior health officials in Iran and counterparts in the United States, moderated by Jonathan Moreno.

• History and Sociology of Science
• Medical Ethics and Health Policy

A Radical New Model of the Brain Illuminates Its Wiring

Network neuroscience could revolutionize how we understand the brain—and change our approach to neurological and psychiatric disorders. Dani Bassett discusses this developing discipline in this recent Wired article.

• Bioengineering
• Electrical and Systems Engineering

Is The Threat of COVID Vaccine Hesitancy Getting Enough Attention?

The ultimate key to ending the coronavirus pandemic is developing an effective vaccine and administering it to the overwhelming majority of the country's 330 million residents. But a number of trends are converging in ways that may prevent the achievement of that population-wide herd immunity. Damon Centola weighs in.

• Communication
• Sociology

Voice Analytics and Artificial Intelligence: Future Directions for a post-COVID world

Will Voice AI become Frankenstein’s monster that ends up breaking Asimov’s Law of Robotics of not obeying human voice commands or harming humans? Or will the adoption of Voice AI in disembodied voice assistants enrich human lives as they become more humanized? Raghu Iyengar discusses these questions in his white paper.

• Marketing

Warren Center Affiliate Profile- Kristian Lum

Although statistics is not a field typically associated with social impact, Kristian Lum uses her expertise in statistical and machine learning models to address important societal issues and hopes to amplify the voices of less powerful groups and individuals in conversations about technology that affects them.

• Computer and Information Science

Boosting the promise — and reining in the peril — of Covid-19 preprints

Preprints are all the rage today among scientists conducting research on issues related to COVID-19 diagnosis, treatment, and vaccine development, however, Jonathan Moreno cautions that preliminary, minimally reviewed information about COVID-19 is spreading as fast as the virus itself.

• History and Sociology of Science
• Medical Ethics and Health Policy
• Philosophy