The Institute for Ethics and the Common Good (ECG) is pleased to announce that three Notre Dame faculty have been named ND–IBM Tech Ethics Lab Program Chairs: Meng Jiang, Frank M. Freimann Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering; Paul Scherz, Our Lady of Guadalupe Professor of Theology, and Tim Weninger, associate professor, computer science and engineering.
As ND–IBM Tech Ethics Lab Program Chairs, these faculty will receive $100,000 per year to develop a research program in technology and ethics that aligns with the vision and mission of the Notre Dame–IBM Technology Ethics Lab. They will have access to programs, events, and community at ECG, and will serve a renewable three-year term. All three faculty will be working on research programs that align with and enhance the Ethics Initiative.
Jiang's research focuses on computational behavior modeling for applications such as intelligent assistance, recommender systems, and question answering. His most recent projects have examined knowledge-augmented NLP, instructed LLM, personalized LLM, LLM machine unlearning, graph neural networks, graph data augmentation, and graph diffusion models. Many of his projects include collaborations with subject matter and domain experts to improve technology outcomes and address ethical challenges by design.
Scherz's work examines theology, science, medicine, and technology. His interests in ethics center on the role of virtue ethics, especially Stoic virtue ethics, in moral theology. He has published articles on many topics in bioethics, such as human enhancement, genetic technology, and end of life ethics. His books analyze issues like the moral formation of scientists, the role of risk in contemporary practical reason, the ethics of precision medicine, and the ethics of artificial intelligence.
Weninger's research in social media and artificial intelligence looks to better understand how humans create and consume information, especially in online social systems. He has received the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation as well as research grants from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the U.S. Army Research Office, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the John Templeton Foundation.
____________
The Notre Dame–IBM Technology Ethics Lab, a key component of the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good and the Notre Dame Ethics Initiative, produces critical research and thought leadership on ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence and other technologies by engaging with a broad set of stakeholders to examine real-world challenges and opportunities. The Lab is supported by a $20-million commitment from IBM.