Carnegie Mellon Recognizes Three Faculty Members with Prestigious Professorships

Carnegie Mellon University recognized three distinguished faculty members — Alex John London(opens in new window), Hoda Heidari(opens in new window) and Brad Myers(opens in new window) — during a Nov. 1 ceremony in honor of their endowed professorships.

London, of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences(opens in new window), has been named the K&L Gates Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies; and Heidari, from the School of Computer Science(opens in new window), has been named the K&L Gates Career Development Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies. Myers was named the Charles M. Geschke (SCS 1973) Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute(opens in new window) (HCII).

Global law firm K&L Gates LLP made a $10 million gift to CMU in 2016 that established the K&L Gates Endowment for Ethics and Computational Technologies(opens in new window). The professorships are part of a series of efforts initiated by K&L Gates to increase research, education and public awareness of the ethical and policy issues that may arise from advances in computational technologies such as artificial intelligence. With London and Heidari’s leadership, the CMU initiative is taking a broad, systemic view of how ethical issues can arise at numerous stages, including before, during or after AI system design and development.

Charles and Nancy Geschke established a fund at CMU in 2011 to support the director of the HCII.

Alex John London

London is an internationally recognized ethicist from the Department of Philosophy(opens in new window) who is frequently called upon to address critical societal problems. He brings deep disciplinary expertise to bear and collaborates with the best technical and scientific minds to make an impact on policy, technology, medicine and science.

London joined CMU in 2000 and in 2016 was named the Clara L West Professor of Ethics and Philosophy. He is the director of the Center for Ethics and Policy(opens in new window) and chief ethicist at the Block Center for Technology and Society(opens in new window). An elected Fellow of the Hastings Center, London’s work focuses on ethical and policy issues surrounding the development and deployment of novel technologies in medicine, biotechnology and artificial intelligence, on methodological issues in theoretical and practical ethics, and on cross-national issues of justice and fairness.

In 2022, Oxford University Press published his book, “For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics.” It has been called a “philosophical tour de force,” a “remarkable achievement” and a “vital foundation on which policy progress should — indeed, must be built.” He also is co-editor of “Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine,” one of the most widely used textbooks in medical ethics.

London is a member of the World Health Organization Expert Group on Ethics and Governance of AI. In addition, he is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine Committee on Creating a Framework for Emerging Science, Technology, and Innovation in Health and Medicine. He also co-leads the ethics core for the National Science Foundation AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups.

For more than a decade, London has helped to shape key ethical guidelines for the oversight of research with human participants. He is currently a member of the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, and he has served as an ethics expert in consultations with organizations including the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the World Medical Association and the World Bank.

Hoda Heidari

Heidari is faculty in the Department of Machine Learning(opens in new window) and the Software and Societal Systems Department(opens in new window) (S3D). She is also affiliated with the HCII, CyLab(opens in new window), the Block Center, Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy(opens in new window)  and the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology(opens in new window).

Heidari’s research broadly concerns the social, ethical and economic implications of artificial intelligence, and in particular, issues of fairness and accountability through the use of machine learning in socially consequential domains. Her work in this area has won a best paper award at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency; an exemplary track award at the ACM Conference on Economics and Computation; and a best paper award at the IEEE Conference on Secure and Trustworthy Machine Learning .

Heidari co-founded and co-leads the university-wide Responsible AI Initiative(opens in new window). She has organized several scholarly events on topics related to responsible and trustworthy AI, including multiple tutorials and workshops at top-tier academic venues specializing in artificial intelligence.

She is particularly interested in translating research contributions into positive impact on AI policy and practice. She has organized multiple campus-wide events and policy convenings, bringing together diverse groups of experts to address such topics as AI governance and accountability and contribute to ongoing efforts in this area at various levels of government.

Brad A. Myers 

Myers is director of the HCII in the School of Computer Science with an affiliated appointment in S3D. He received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award in Research in 2017 for outstanding fundamental and influential research contributions to the study of human-computer interaction, and in 2022 SCS honored him with its Alan J. Perlis Award for Imagination in Computer Science “for pioneering human-centered methods to democratize programming.” He is an IEEE Fellow, ACM Fellow, member of the CHI Academy, and winner of numerous best paper awards and most influential paper awards.

Myers has authored or edited more than 550 publications, and he has been on the editorial board of six journals. He has been a consultant on user interface design and implementation to over 90 companies and regularly teaches courses on user interface design and software. Myers received a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Toronto, where he developed the Peridot user interface tool. He received master’s and bachelor’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and belongs to the ACM, SIGCHI, IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society.