Theresa Stadler

I am a Senior Data Scientist at the Swiss Data Science Center in Lausanne (Switzerland) where I am part of the Innovation Team focused on data science projects in the humanitarian data space.

Before joining the SDSC, I was a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the Security & Privacy Engineering Lab at EPFL (Switzerland) led by Carmela Troncoso.

My work focuses on the responsible deployment of data-driven technologies. To me, ‘‘Responsible AI’’ is more than just a buzzword. AI systems deployed in the real world impact real people with sometimes real adverse effects on their lived experiences. To avoid these, in my work, I follow some principles that I have distilled over the years:

Beyond “responsible use”, we need “responsible design”

To avoid harms, ethics needs to be baked into a project from the very first steps. It is not sufficient to only think about potential misuse just before deployment.

Responsible design starts with identifying and acknowledging risks

We can only fix what we know about. That is why a thorough risk analysis is essential.

Responsible design must consider fundamental trade-offs between risks and benefits

Certain trade-offs between benefits and risks are inherent and cannot be resolved even with the best technical mitigation measures.

My research in this area has been featured on multiple national media outlets and continues to inform policy makers on a national and European level.

Before joining EPFL, I previously worked as a researcher for Privitar, a London-based start-up, where I developed enterprise software that implements privacy-enhancing technologies and aims to makes these technologies available to organisations at scale. I hold a PhD in Computer Science from EPFL (Switzerland) and a Master’s degree in Computational Neuroscience (Biomathematics) from the University of Tübingen (Germany).