Biography

Mona Sloane, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Data Science and Media Studies at the University of Virginia (UVA). As a sociologist, she studies the intersection of technology and society, specifically in the context of AI design, use, and policy. At UVA, she is a Faculty Lead in the Digital Technology and Democracy Lab at the Karsh Institute of Democracy, Affiliated Faculty with the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality, and Faculty Affiliate with the Thriving Youth in a Digital Environment (TYDE) research initiative. Additionally, she convenes the Co-Opting AI series, a public speaker series focused on all aspects of AI technology and its application, ranging from security to food, games, and more, and serves as the editor of the Co-Opting AI book series at the University of California Press as well as the Technology Editor for Public Books. She also serves as the co-chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) project Human and Organizational Factors in AI Risk Management and on the panel of the NASEM Airport Cooperative Research Program Project. Her book “Co-Opting AI: Society” is under contract with the University of California Press. 

Mona’s current research focuses on AI’s influence on the organization of social life, applied AI accountability and transparency, and AI policy and governance. At UVA, she runs Sloane Lab which spearheads social science leadership in interdisciplinary research and applied work on responsible AI, public scholarship, and technology policy. Projects include the development of new methods for AI auditing and AI transparency, innovating AI procurement, AI in hiring and talent acquisition, AI participation and public education, new AI tools for investigative journalism, global AI policy and local governance innovation on AI, and a range of different AI topics. 

Previous projects Mona has led include A BETTER TECH, a public interest technology convention and career fair that brought together students and organizations in the public interest technology space across the United States and beyond that reached over 12,000 people, the Terra Incognita NYC project, an investigation of New York City’s digital public spaces in the pandemic, as well as the AI Procurement Roundtables project in collaboration with the IEEE Standards Association. In Spring 2020, Mona worked with the Swiss Consulate New York City on the “AI Here and There” series on the social impact of AI. From 2020-2021 she was an inaugural fellow of the Future Imagination Collaboratory (FIC) at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. In December 2020, she was added to the “100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics Hall of Fame”. In 2021, she was named a NYU Faculty Honoree. Since 2021, she has served on the board of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative of the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs.

Mona currently is a Faculty Lead with the Digital Technology and Democracy Lab at the UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy, a Fellow with the NYU Institute for Public Knowledge, and a Research Professor by Courtesy at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. She also is affiliated with the Tübingen AI Center in Germany where she recently completed a 3-year federally funded research project on the operationalization of ethics in German AI startups.

Mona holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science and has completed fellowships at the University of California at Berkeley, at the University of Cape Town, and at the Weizenbaum Institute Berlin. Before joining UVA, Mona was a Research Assistant Professor at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, a Senior Research Scientist at the NYU Center for Responsible AI, and the Founding Director of the *This Is Not A Drill* program, which develops public pedagogy on art, equity, technology, and the climate emergency.

Mona is a frequent public speaker and commentator, and has written for The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, The Hill, Nature, Times Higher Education, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, OneZero Medium, and other outlets.