Humanitarian AI Today

Host of Humanitarian AI Today, Mia Kossiavelou speaks individuals from across the humanitarian and tech communities involved in advancing the Humanitarian AI and AI for Good fields

Humanitarian AI Today is podcast series produced by the Humanitarian AI meetup groups. Tune into the series via: itunes, Spotify, Google Play, Soudcloud.

Lars Peter Nissen from ACAPS

Humanitarian AI Today’s guest host Sarah Spencer and Lars Peter Nissen from ACAPS who produces the Trumanitarian podcast series interview each other and discuss humanitarian operations, humanitarian applications of artificial intelligence, data, decision making and their work and research.

Allison Cohen from Mila

Allison Cohen, Applied Projects Lead, AI for Humanity at Mila talks about Mila’s AI for Humanity program, her work, background and thoughts on AI for Good and Humanitarian AI.

Alexa Prize Winners: Jinho Choi, Sarah Fillwock and James Finch from Emory University

Jinho Choi, Sarah Fillwock and James Finch from Emory University discuss “Emora” their team’s Alexa Prize winning socialbot, conversational AI and humanitarian applications of socialbots and emerging digital assistants like Alexa.

Leo Frey with Aktion Deutschland Hilft

Leo Frey, Deputy Head of Division at Germany's Relief Coalition (Aktion Deutschland Hilft) speaks about his work at ADH, crisis response and using technology to improve humanitarian operations.

Steve Hellen from Catholic Relief Services

Steve Hellen is a Senior Information Technology Director for Field Systems at Catholic Relief Services. Steve speaks about his work helping CRS’ programs worldwide improve their efficacy by incorporating digital tools such as mobile, data analytics, and emerging technologies like AI.

Xoán Fernández García, Social Innovation Consultant

Xoán Fernández García speaks about his work as a consultant specializing in social innovation, technology and entrepreneurship for development, sustainability and digital transformation with years of expertise working across Latin America.

Sarah Spencer, Independent Consultant and DFID Civil Servant

Sarah Spencer speaks about her work as an independent consultant and Civil Servant with the UK Department for International Development, specializing in social development, conflict related programing and providing guidance on incorporating frontier technologies, AI and machine learning into existing and planned humanitarian programming.

Valentina Pavel from the Ada Lovelace Institute

Valentina Pavel speaks about her work as a Legal Researcher at the Ada Lovelace Institute, a UK-based research and deliberative body working to ensure data and AI work for people and society. Valentina is leading the Changing Regulations workstream of the Rethinking Data program, a project designed to change the data governance ecosystem by transforming how we talk about data through our narratives, developing people-centered data practice, and envisioning a positive vision for the future of data regulation.

Seth Goodman from AidData

Seth Goodman is a Data Engineer with AidData, a research lab at the College of Willam & Mary’s Global Research Institute. Seth speaks GeoQuery, AidData’s free spatial data platform and AidData’s machine learning initiatives.

Robert Trigwell from IOM and Kate Dodgson from the Data Science Initiative

Kate Dodgson and Robert Trigwell speak about the Humanitarian Data Science and Ethics Group and DSEG’s new Framework for the Ethical Use of Advanced Data Science Methods in the Humanitarian Sector. Kate is a consultant with the Data Science Initiative in the Hague and Rob is an Analytical, Knowledge and Output (AKO) Unit Lead at the United Nations International Organization for Migration.

Laura Walker McDonald from DIAL

Laura Walker McDonald, Senior Director of Insights and Impact at the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) and former member of the Humanitarian Innovation Fund’s Funding Committee, speaks about humanitarian AI, Dial, the Humanitarian Innovation Fund and HIF’s search for new Funding Committee members.

Pamela Chestek with the Open Source Initiative (OSI)

Pamela Chestek, an attorney with extensive experience in open source software who is a member of the Open Source Initiative's Board of Directors and Chair of OSI's License Committee discusses open source initiatives, intellectual property law, open source licenses and the subject of open data.

Brian Dolan from Verdant.AI

Verdant.AI, is a startup studio that builds enterprise grade AI products and supports companies working to solve the UN's sustainable development goals. Brian Dolan, CEO of Verdant. AI, is a cyberneticist humanitarian actor bridging the worlds of math and analysis for the good of humanity. Brian speaks about Verdant. AI, his work, entrepreneurship in Africa, AI in digital therapeutics, and discuss how one of Verdant's studio companies is helping farmers by bringing liquidity to the biomass supply chain.

Doulkifli Boukraa from the University of Jijel, Algeria

Doulkifli Boukraa from the University of Jijel, Algeria speaks about his work, students, the tech scene in Algeria and about his Graphs4Good hackathon project applying Neo4j graph algorithms to gain insights from question answering systems such as StackExchange.

Dan Dardani from MIT

Daniel Dardani, a Technology Licensing Officer with MIT's Technology Licensing Office, speaks about intellectual property law relevant to artificial intelligence and humanitarian AI.

Susi Mai and Jeremy McKane from UltraMarine Ocean

Susi Mai and Jeremy McKane, organizers of the UltraMarine Ocean Summit, speak about their work building communities taking action around ocean conservation.

Sean Griffin and Leo Meyerovich from Disaster Tech and Graphistry

Sean Griffin from Disaster Tech and Leo Meyerovich from Graphistry speak about their Neo4j Graphs4Good hackathon project scaling Covid-19 behavior change and anti-disinformation.

Matt Cloyd creator of Aspen

Matt Cloyd speaks about Aspen, a Neo4j Graphs4Good Hackathon project he started. Aspen is a simple to use markup language for creating graph data

Lambert Hogenhout and Vivek Khetan from the UN and Accenture

Lambert Hogenhout Chief of Data Analytics, Partnerships and Technology Innovation at the United Nations and Vivek Khetan an AI Researcher at Accenture Labs speak about their Neo4j Graphs4Good Hackathon project linked to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Karin Wolok with Neo4j

Karin Wolok, Community Development Manager with Neo4j speaks about Neo4j's Graphs4Good Hackathon, graph database technology and collaboration with humanitarian organizations.

Maria Axente from PwC

Maria Axente, Responsible AI and AI for Good Lead with PwC and Director of Outreach at AI Commons, speaks about her work and thoughts on responsible AI and the role of AI in achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals.

Eric Talbert from MedShare

Eric Talbert, Western Regional Director of MedShare, a humanitarian organization sourcing and directly delivering medical supplies to communities in need around the world, speaks Covid-19 crisis response and about questions humanitarian actors would like to be able to ask popular digital assistants like Alexa, Cortana, Google or Siri.

Rudradeb Mitra from Omdena

Rudradeb Mitra speaks about Omdena, a global platform he founded where changemakers build ethical and inclusive AI solutions to real-world problems through collaboration.

Sameer Maskey from Fusemachines

Sameer Maskey Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University and Founder of Fusemachines, speaks about AI education and about Fusemachines, an AI solutions & services provider empowering everyone to leverage AI by running schools in underserved communities and connecting talent with job opportunities.

Stefania Druga from Cognimates

Stefania Druga Ph.D. student at the University of Washington researching AI literacy for families speaks about her research and about Hackidemia and Cognimates, two initiatives which she founded.

Alfredo Kalaitzis from Element AI

Alfredo Kalaitzis an Applied Research Scientist with Element AI speaks about Element AI’s cutting edge AI for Good work.

Gary Forster and Ruba Ishak from Publish What You Fund and Ground Truth Solutions

Ruba Ishak from Ground Truth Solutions and Gary Forster from Publish What You Fund speaks about their work in the humanitarian transparency and open data space, their upcoming webinar and thoughts on humanitarian AI.

Mike Kaul from the Defense Innovation Unit

Mike Kaul, Director of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Applications at the Defense Innovation Unit speaks about humanitarian AI and the DIU's xView Challenge.

Ran Goldblatt from New Light Technologies

Ran Goldblatt speaks about his work at New Light Technologies, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and humanitarian AI.

Nathaniel Manning from Ushahidi

Nathaniel Manning, CEO of Ushahidi, speaks about humanitarian AI and Dispatcher, a new Ushahidi project which Nat will be heading using machine learning to match community resources with local needs.

Natasha Freidus from Needslist

Natasha Freidus speaks about NeedsList, a real-time needs registry for disaster relief and humanitarian aid which she founded.