We are delighted to share that Dr. Dori-Hacohen has been named to Diversability’s 2023 D-30 Disability Impact List!

Diversability said Dr. Dori-Hacohen “is a leading advocate for neurodiversity” and called out her success in infusing her research with an intersectional lens based on her lived experiences as a disabled faculty member and PI. The full honoree page is available here.

Dr. Dori-Hacohen shared: “It is a deep honor to be named to Diversability’s D-30 List and be recognized for the impact of my work as one of the very few disabled PIs in academia. To be named alongside the late, amazing Judith Heumann, a leading disability rights activist, makes the honor even more special.”

We are delighted to announce that our project, BRIMI: Bias Reduction In Medical Information, has been awarded NSF funding under their Fairness in AI program! This recognition highlights the lab’s pioneering work in using artificial intelligence to detect and mitigate biased health information, particularly impacting minoritized groups. BRIMI’s innovative approach will contribute to equity in health information, improving fairness in AI, medicine, and the online information ecosystem. The project’s multidisciplinary team includes Seattle Children’s Hospital and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, non-profits, and industry partners. This groundbreaking effort is, to the best of our knowledge, the first large-scale computational study of biased health information. We are looking forward to advancing our unique Fairness via AI approach to address critical challenges in health information and reduce biases!

We are delighted to announce that our project, FACT-CHAMP, was awarded the NSF Convergence Accelerator’s 2021 Cohort Phase I Award! FACT CHAMP (Fact-checker, Academic, and Community Collaboration Tools) is a vital initiative addressing online misinformation and racially targeted hate speech, led by fact-checking non-profit Meedan. By fostering collaboration among fact-checkers, non-profits, researchers, and community leaders, particularly from minority groups, FACT CHAMP aims to curb misinformation and reduce hate speech. The platform facilitates secure sharing of misinformation data and research challenges, bridging the gap between academia and practice. The multidisciplinary approach, combining social science and computer science research, demonstrates a commitment to addressing the complex challenges of misinformation. The RIET lab is excited to be part of this innovative project and dedicated to creating a positive societal impact!

We are pleased to announce the new Reducing Information Ecosystem Threats (RIET) Lab.

The RIET Lab researches some of the most vexing threats to democratic nations, including disinformation, weaponized controversy, trust erosion on- and offline, and botnets, from a computational perspective. We use state-of-the-art technologies and collect petabyte-scale datasets from social networks.

Our research focuses on threats to the information ecosystem online and to healthy public discourse from an information retrieval lens, informed by insights from the social sciences. Upcoming projects address the connections between m/disinformation and weaponized controversy, online and in social networks; and utilizing cybersecurity and graph theoretic approaches to detect malicious actors. Additionally, our research addresses fairness and bias in medicine. The RIET lab tackles these research questions from an AI ethics, fairness & safety perspective.

For more information, please contact the Director of the RIET Lab, Prof. Shiri Dori-Hacohen.