Virginia Tech, Drexel University partner for workshop on ethics in big data analytics

Virginia Tech has teamed with Drexel University to organize a workshop on Collaboration as Big Data Ethics. Set for Sept. 29 and 30 at the Virginia Tech Research Center ─ Arlington, the workshop will focus on building ethical data analytic practices.

Government representatives and industry professionals who map practices in data analytics will join leading scholars from the computer and social sciences to discuss how to work together to build on what is known about power, surveillance, privacy, and inequality.

The workshop is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation and the Virginia Tech National Capital Region Office of the Vice President.

Susan Sterett, professor in the Center for Public Administration and Policy, and Kelly Joyce, a professor of sociology and director of the Center for Science, Technology and Society at Drexel, worked together to secure the grant from the National Science Foundation to host the conference.

Sterett and Joyce will open the two-day workshop with a presentation on Big Data, Disciplinary Expertise, and Building Community for Empirical Ethics.

Joyce has been collaborating with an information science colleague to understand how data scientists create and work with algorithms and software to create big data sets, as well as the individual, professional, cultural, and institutional values and incentives that drive this work.  Joyce notes, “People are excited about the promise of big data to answer meaningful questions about society, but we need to be reflective about the disciplinary expertise that shapes the questions asked and the data content.”

In addition to Sterett, a number of other Virginia Tech faculty will participate in the workshop. Sallie Keller, professor and director of the Social and Decision Analytics Laboratory, and Naren Ramakrishnan, the Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech and director of theDiscovery Analytics Center, will make presentations on “Does Big Data Change the Privacy Landscape” and “Modeling Population-level Activity Using Open Source Data,” respectively.