Francesca Rossi (born December 7, 1962) is an Italian computer scientist, currently working at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Lab (New York, USA) as an IBM Fellow and the IBM AI Ethics Global Leader.

Education and career

She received her bachelor and master degree in Computer Science from the

University of Pisa The University of Pisa ( it, Università di Pisa, UniPi), officially founded in 1343, is one of the oldest universities in Europe. History The Origins The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place ...

in 1986, and a PhD in Computer Science from the same university in 1993. After her graduation, she stayed at the University of Pisa as an assistant professor until 1998. She then moved to the University of Padova where she has been an associate professor until 2001, and a full professor until 2018. In 2014-2015 she has been on sabbatical as a Fellow of Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University. In 2015 she joined IBM Research, at the T.J. Watson IBM Research Lab (New York, USA), as a distinguished researcher. In 2020 she become an executive and appointed as an IBM Fellow.

Research interests

Her research interests are in the area of Artificial Intelligence, with particular focus on constraint programming, combinatorial optimization, preference modeling, reasoning, and aggregation, knowledge representation, constrained reinforcement learning, ethically-aligned AI, neuro-symbolic AI, and cognitive AI architectures. In the past, she has also worked on language semantics, graph grammars, logic programming, and Petri nets. She is also interested in understanding how to embed ethical principles into decision making systems, to support either individuals or groups make more ethical decisions. Topics of special attention, in this regards, are detecting bias, defining distances between preference models, as well as embedding ethical behavioral constraints into reinforcement learning models. Most recently, her research interest is in leveraging cognitive theories of human reasoning and decision making, such as the thinking fast and slow theory of D. Kahneman, to advance AI’s capabilities. On these topics, she has published over 230 articles in international journals and conferences. She has also edited over 20 volumes, including the ''Handbook of Constraint Programming''. She co-authored the book "A Short Introduction to Preferences: Between Artificial Intelligence and Social Choice", published in the Synthesis Lectures on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Morgan & Claypool Publishers, July 2011, and she authored the book "Il confine del futuro -- Possiamo fidarci dell'Intelligenza Artificiale?", published by Feltrinelli for the Italian market.

Awards, honors, and appointments

*Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), president, 2022-2024 *Women in Tech association, Tecnovisionarie award — Artificial Intelligence, AI ethics category, 2021 *General chair, AAAI conference, 2020 *Radcliffe Fellowship, 2014–2015 *President, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2013 – 2015 *Fellow, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2012 *Association for Constraint Programming, distinguished service award, 2010 *Fellow,

European Association for Artificial Intelligence The European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI) (formerly European Co-ordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI)) is the representative body for the European artificial intelligence community. EurAI was established in 19 ...

(EurAI), 2008 *President, Association for Constraint Programming, 2003–2007

AI Ethics roles

Francesca is a leader in the field of AI ethics, both with her AI research projects aimed at embedding human values in AI systems and the many roles she has had, or currently has, in this area: *Board member, Partnership on AI, 2016-currently *Steering Committee member and expert, Global Partnership on AI, 2020-currently *Co-chair, World Economic Forum Global Future Council on AI for Humanity, 2020-2022 *Member, European Commission High Level Expert Group on AI, 2018-2019 *Member, scientific advisory board of the Future of Life Institute, 2015-currently *Co-chair, IBM AI ethics board, 2019-currently *Co-chair, IJCAI 2022 special track on AI for good, 2022 *Program co-chair, 1st AAAI/ACM conference on AI Ethics and Society, 2018 *Steering committee member, AAAI/ACM conference on AI Ethics and Society, 2018-currently *IBM AI Ethics Global Leader, 2017-currently

TEDx Talks

Francesca has delivered 4 TEDx talks, on topics related to AI: *“Sustainable AI”, TEDx Osnabruck University, 2015 *“Ethical Artificial Intelligence”, TEDx Ghent, 2015 *“Convivere con l’Intelligenza Artificiale”, TEDx Lake Como, 2015 *"Macchine che aiutano a pensare", TEDx Reggio Emilia, 2022

Podcasts

She has delivered several online talks and podcast, including "Fast and Slow AI", Francesca Rossi and Daniel Kahneman, CERN SPARK, 2021

Media coverage

Francesca has been interviewed by several prominent media venues, including: D di Repubblica (May 2021), The Nikkei (June 2021), Insider: Inside the Technology (September 2021), Fortune (December 2021), The Financial Times (Sept. 2018), The Nikkei (Jan. 2018), The Economist (June 2016), The Washington Post (May 2015), the Wall Street Journal (May 2015), Sydney Morning Herald (Feb. 2015), Euronews (Jan. 2015). She has also written some pieces for the media, such as: *"How IBM is Working Towards a Fairer AI", Harvard Business Review, Nov. 2020

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rossi, Francesca 1962 births Living people Radcliffe fellows Artificial intelligence researchers Italian computer scientists Italian women computer scientists University of Pisa alumni Academic staff of the University of Padua Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence IBM employees IBM people IBM Women

Academics An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...