Dr. Joy Buolamwini

Computer Scientist

Joy Buolamwini, born in Canada to Ghanaian parents, now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After tinkering with robotics in high school she developed mobile apps in Zambia as a Fulbright fellow. Buolamwini then followed her lifelong passion for computer science, engineering, and art to MIT in 2015, where she did groundbreaking research as a graduate student. In addition to being a renowned speaker, she is founder of the A.J.L. Her writing has been featured in TIME, The NYT, Harvard Business Review, and The Atlantic. As the Poet of Code, she creates art to illuminate the impact of artificial intelligence on society and advises world leaders on preventing AI harm. She is the recipient of notable awards, including a Rhodes Scholarship, the Morals & Machines Prize, and the Technological Innovation Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Her research on facial recognition technologies is featured in the Emmy-nominated documentary, Coded Bias.