Advancing knowledge and practice wherever people interact with information and technology

Mahdieh Taher, a Fall 2020 Master of Data Science graduate, has been awarded the Jack Larson Data for Good Fellowship for her work as a data engineer dedicated to improving medical diagnoses in rural areas. 

Taher envisions designing an edge device that doesn’t require robust internet connectivity to detect diabetic retinopathy. Such an AI-driven device would enable many different healthcare workers to be trained to use it to compensate for the lack of ophthalmologists in many rural areas, leading to efficiency and increased quality of care for diabetic patients.

Early in 2020, MIMS alumnus Marc Faddoul, who works as a research scientist with School of Information Professor Hany Farid, discovered something: it looked like the social media company TikTok based its user recommendations on physical appearance. Faddoul began to play around with dummy accounts: if he followed a white woman with blonde hair, it was suggested he follow other white women with blonde hair; same with Asian men, white men with beards, and black women. 

“I was trying to find political filter bubbles, and how they could be enabled by the recommender,” Faddoul said. “The effect struck me while I was looking at the recommended profiles: there was much more homogeneity from a physiognomic perspective than from a political one.”