Bhargavi Ganesh

Hi! My name is Bhargavi and I’m a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, doing interdisciplinary research at the intersection of philosophy, computer science, and public policy. I am affiliated with the Center for Technomoral Futures and the UKRI Research Node on Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Governance and Regulation. My work is concerned with understanding how we might assign responsibility for automated decision-making algorithms and autonomous systems. Since the system itself cannot be considered blameworthy/praiseworthy, how do we create a framework that incentivizes stakeholders within the system to design and deploy algorithms that are ethical? And how does assigning responsibility help engender trust in an ecosystem where public trust in algorithms appears to be declining?

Before starting my PhD, I spent some time working in policy research. My CV can be found here. I worked as a Research Analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, using computational techniques to understand the impacts of historical racial covenants and bank closures on vulnerable communities. Prior to that, I was a Masters student at UChicago MS-CAPP. During my masters, I interned at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and looked at the growth of fintech and algorithmic systems and the potential implications for fair lending. I also worked part-time for Data for Progress, on a project related to synthetic data creation. For a few years before that, I worked as a researcher at the Urban Institute, focusing on issues in housing finance policy, including post-crisis challenges to access to credit for minorities, affordable housing, and health outcomes in government-owned housing units.