CSC Graduate Assistant Sunny Fang recently participated as part of a panel on Research and Innovation in Responsible AI as part of New York Tech Hosts: Student-Led Responsible Tech Initiatives. This event was part of #AIWeekNY organized by Pulse NYC — a community-led festival celebrating innovation across the AI ecosystem. The panel consisted of all students or recent graduates, highlighting the organizer's commitment to showcase student-led efforts in the Responsible AI field.
On the panel, Sunny spoke about her research journey in computational social science and natural language processing, reflecting on how her love for teaching and research inform one another. Her current research on broadband data analysis stems from her realization that even within New York City, internet access was not a given right for some of her students at Columbia University's Double Discovery Center.
Sunny also remarked on how she is grateful to return to the Computational Science Center (CSC) at Barnard as a Graduate Assistant, having served as a Computing Fellow (CF) as an undergraduate student. She noted how the Computing Fellows program, and the CSC as a whole, encourages students from all backgrounds to think critically and engage responsibly with technology, something that resonated with the audience and her fellow panelists who had diverse backgrounds in design, business, and law. The panel offered insights on challenges ahead in responsible technology, such as the lack of AI governance and regulation, but also gave Sunny hope in finding opportunities to collaborate with like-minded individuals of her generation.