Nuno Moniz, associate research professor at the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society, has been named managing director of the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab. He will report to Professor Meghan Sullivan, who has been appointed acting director of the Notre Dame Technology Ethics Center (ND TEC).
Connecting some 30 faculty from more than a dozen academic units on campus, ND TEC was established in 2019 to advance interdisciplinary research and education concerned with the impact of technology on humanity.
As the applied arm of ND TEC, the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab promotes human values in technology through tangible, applied, and interdisciplinary research that addresses core ethical questions.
Moniz, who will also continue as the associate director for the Data, Inference, Analytics, and Learning (DIAL) Lab, studies machine learning, looking into problems such as rare event detection, responsible AI, data privacy and model interpretability. He is particularly interested in interdisciplinary efforts to understand the real-world impact of intelligent systems. Moniz received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Porto and previously worked as a senior researcher at the Porto’s Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology, and Science.
Sullivan is the Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy and director of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, a university-wide research institute that supports faculty, doctoral students, undergraduates and visiting fellows pursuing cross-disciplinary research on major ethical themes. She was recently appointed to direct the Notre Dame Ethics Initiative, which arose from the University’s new Strategic Framework. The initiative’s goal is to make Notre Dame a preeminent global destination for the study of ethics, offering rigorous training for future generations of ethicists and moral leaders, a platform for engagement of the Catholic moral tradition with other modes of inquiry, and an opportunity to forge insights into some of the most significant ethical issues of our time.
“Meghan has shown herself extremely capable of bringing together faculty from across disciplines to address matters of great importance for Notre Dame’s mission,” said Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C., the vice president and associate provost for interdisciplinary initiatives. “Outgoing director Kirsten Martin, the William P. and Hazel B. White Center Professor of Technology Ethics, has built a great foundation during her time as director and I have no doubt that Meghan will provide the leadership that will allow us to take our efforts in tech ethics to the next level.
“And we are very pleased to have someone of Nuno’s caliber managing the ND-IBM Tech Ethics Lab. He combines both technical knowledge and a deep interest in ethical questions pertaining to AI and other technological innovations. This is an exciting time for the ND-IBM Tech Ethics Lab.”
As he begins the new role, Moniz said he looked forward to working with the lab’s team of experts and enhancing collaboration with colleagues at IBM. “As we observe the growing opportunities and challenges of AI with regard to its widespread deployment and use in society, we need to redouble our attention to discussing, researching and promoting applied tech ethics," he said. “The Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab can be a leader in the dynamic and historic moment we live in.”