This month, we welcomed four new experts! Ben Dynkin and Travis Ross have joined as Contributing Fellows and Bob Johansen and Veronica Petrencu have joined as Advisors. Their bios are below.
Ben Dynkin is a cybersecurity and technology policy professional working in the financial services sector. Ben also founded Atlas Cybersecurity, a managed cybersecurity services company based in New York, and the American Cybersecurity Institute, a non-profit think tank exploring legal and policy issues around cybersecurity and cyber warfare. Ben is also a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Metropolitan Infragard Members Alliance, a leading public-private partnership between the FBI and critical infrastructure operators. Ben teaches privacy, cybersecurity, and tech ethics as an adjunct professor at both Hofstra University and the City College of New York. Ben’s interest in applying the principles and values of Orthodox Judaism to AI ethics stems from a lifetime of finding ways of applying his religious and ethical principles to his work in technology policy. Ben holds a law degree from Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, and a BA in economics from Hofstra University. Ben is also completing his Master’s degree in AI Ethics at the University of Cambridge, where he is a member of the inaugural cohort of the program.
Bob Johansen is a distinguished fellow with the Institute for the Future in Silicon Valley. For more almost 50 years, Bob has worked as a professional futurist to help organizations around the world prepare for and shape the future, including large corporations, universities and nonprofits. The author or co-author of thirteen books, including the best-selling Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present, and most recently Office Shock: Creating Better Futures for Work and Living. Bob’s books are used widely in corporations, universities, nonprofits, and at the Army War College. Bob holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University—as well as an M.Div. degree that focused on world religions.
Veronica Petrencu is currently Project Lead and Research Fellow for Enterprise for Society Center in Lausanne, Switzerlan, where she is involved in projects related to sustainable food and agriculture, responsible consumption, sustainability in education and public health prevention. She is notably interested in the role and impact of AI on consumers’ behavior and mental health, considering the current challenges our societies face regarding planetary boundaries, inequality, and public health.
She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland and has 10 years of experience in research related to international migration, civil conflicts, integration policies, attitudes towards immigrants, migration policies, and economic history. She published one article in the prestigious American Economic Review.
Travis Ross is a historian and informaticist with a PhD in history from the University of Utah. He is currently an Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Humanities Plus initiative at George Fox University. He previously held a faculty appointment in the Department of History at Yale University, as well as completing a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale’s Center for Medical Informatics. He focuses on moments of rapid innovation in the way that we have created, organized, and used knowledge and information in capitalism. His interest in AI includes both the practical application of machine learning and other sophisticated computing technologies to the research questions in the humanities as well as the critical application of historical reasoning to our own moment of rapid, uncertain transformation. Combining his skills and knowledge as a historian with his technical knowledge, Ross is working on a practical and clear-eyed vision of the bounds within which the many technologies identified under the label AI are likely to develop in the future.
