As a Rotary International Global Peace Scholar, Evani Radiya-Dixit is conducting research on policymaking for facial recognition technology. Advised by Professor Gina Neff, Evani is a Visiting Researcher at Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, at the University of Cambridge. Evani completed her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. Previously, she worked on machine learning projects at Nvidia and Google. Her research work has been published at the International Conference on Machine Learning, the Stanford Public Interest Technology Lab, and the think tank New America. With her interest in public service, Evani recently worked at the U.S. federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and served as a data privacy strategist for a California City Council. She also served as a Teaching Assistant for Computer Science courses and taught in Bogotá through Stanford CS Bridge. The Rotary Club of Cambridge Sawston is her in country host Club. Nevada City Rotary is her sponsoring Club with support from Grass Valley Rotary.
Evani's research on policymaking for facial recognition technology will provide a stronger framework for accountability of current and emerging applications of facial recognition technology. Related questions Evani is raising: What new norms and values do we imagine for ourselves? Can we imagine how technology, police, the state, etc. might play a different role in our lives? Imagination and reality go hand in hand. To quote Derrick Bell, “To see things as they really are, you must imagine what they might be.”
