2023 Rhodes Forum on Technology & Society
11 November 2023
09:00 - 17:00 (GMT+00:00)
Rhodes House
Description
Embracing a new era of technology, the second annual iteration of the Rhodes Forum on Technology and Society delves into the heart of Purpose-Driven Technology in the 21st Century, where impact has value for people, the environment and society. In an age where technological strides continuously redefine our boundaries, this year's Forum seeks to unravel the interplay between innovation and intention.
The world is changing fast. AI handles everything from simple tasks to creative feats, biotech is revolutionising healthcare, and technology is reshaping defence strategies. In this era of rapid progress, we're shifting the focus from just speed and size to a technology with a clear sense of purpose.
Join us at the Forum to explore the fusion of innovation and intention. Through keynotes, panel discussions, and opportunities to connect, the Forum will explore a range of perspectives from across cultures and disciplines, creating a conversation that welcomes technologists, policymakers, and leaders from around the globe.
Forum Speaker
Robert Bassett Cross MC is the CEO and founder of Adarga, one of the UK’s leading developers of artificial intelligence software, serving customers in Defence and National Security. Robert has applied his experience as a former British Army officer, leading teams on counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the world, to build an intelligent platform that allows users to analyse huge volumes of information at speed, and maintain a dynamic understanding of threats and opportunities in order to make better, faster and more informed decisions. After leaving the British Army, Rob joined J.P. Morgan as an investment banker in the corporate finance group where he advised international corporate customers from a number of sectors across the spectrum of corporate finance advisory, mergers and acquisitions, and offerings roles. Rob graduated with a degree in law (LLB (Hons)) from Exeter University.
As CEO of Code First Girls, Anna Brailsford is on a mission to eliminate the diversity gap in tech by providing free education and employment to women, globally. Anna has transformed Code First Girls from a social enterprise to a rapidly accelerating profit-making business, including securing Series A funding from female angel investors and a leading investment firm to accelerate the company’s growth and close the gender gap in the traditionally male-dominated tech industry. Anna has plans to create one million opportunities for women to learn to code and participate in the tech industry in the next five years. Previously, Anna was the Commercial Director of both Lynda.com and LinkedIn. When LinkedIn acquired Lynda for $1.5 Billion 2015, she became part of the fourth-largest acquisition in social media history and subsequently contributed to the creation of LinkedIn Learning, one of the largest online learning platforms.
Prof Chana has joined DIANA as its first Managing Director, bringing with him extensive experience of leading innovative science and technology research and development in academia, industry and government, focusing on global risks and next generation infrastructure security. He is joining DIANA from Imperial College London where he was Director of the Institute for Security Science and Technology and Co-Director of the Centre for Financial Technology within Imperial College Business School. Prof Chana has consulted and lectured worldwide with businesses and governments on the nature and implications of disruptive and emerging technologies, and he has several decades of experience in technology entrepreneurship, covering a wide range of applications spanning quantum cascade laser detectors to materials science. Established by the current Secretary General, Prof Chana was the founding Chair of NATO's Advisory Group on Emerging and Disruptive Technologies and is currently a high-level science advisor to the UK’s Ministry of Defence. Prof Chana holds MSci and PhD degrees in Physics from King’s College London.
Hila is the Deputy Head at the United Nations (UN) World Food Programme (WFP) Innovation Accelerator and was one of the first team members when the Accelerator was launched in August 2015. Prior to joining WFP in 2012, Hila advised start-ups and venture capital firms as a corporate lawyer at a leading Tel Aviv firm. She holds an MBA from the SDA Bocconi School of Management (Italy) and a Bachelor of Law from the University of Haifa (Israel).
Dr. Stephen Damianos is the Director of Technology and Human Rights at Perseus Strategies. In this capacity, he manages the firm’s neurorights portfolio, working to promote the ethical development of neurotechnologies through the application of human rights law and privacy law. Stephen holds a DPhil (PhD) in International Development from the University of Oxford. Stephen’s doctoral research investigated digitally mediated human rights abuses perpetuated against asylum seekers in Greece, with a focus on border technologies, corporate complicity, and novel forms of state violence. Prior to commencing his doctoral work, Stephen completed an MPhil in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge and a B.A in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Stephen has taught courses on human rights and forced migration at the University of Oxford, worked in detention centers to provide legal aid to incarcerated migrants, contributed to mass atrocity prevention efforts in the United Kingdom, and supported displaced researchers around the world through mentorship and skills training at the Refugee-Led Research Hub. Stephen is a Truman Scholar and a Rhodes Scholar.
Nasser, a public interest technologist, is devoted to utilizing technology to explore the dynamics of power imbalances in justice and societal domains. He is currently the Policy Counsel for Technology & Economic Justice at the U.S.-based non-profit, Color Of Change, where he spearheads public policy initiatives benefiting Black Americans. As a Global Atlantic Fellow at the Atlantic Institute, Rhodes Trust, Nasser explores designing narrative futures through Extended Reality (XR) technologies. Additionally, he is a 2021 Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity, collaborating with the Nelson Mandela Foundation and Columbia University. Previously, Nasser directed a tech policy center at Northeastern Law School and served as the Chief Technologist for the district prosecutor in Boston, MA. He holds a Computer Science degree from Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston.
Nick Elliott CB MBE Nick is the UK Chair of the European defence technology and AI company, Helsing, a non-executive director with the global programme management consultancy Turner & Townsend, and an angel investor. Nick has led large private and public sector organisations in defence, and infrastructure. As Director General of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, he set up and ran what has been described as the most successful component of the UK’s response to the covid-19 pandemic. Following an initial career in the Army, he went on to deliver some of the biggest rail infrastructure projects in the UK before returning to defence as the Deputy CEO of Defence Equipment & Support. He is a noted speaker on defence and technology issues. Nick has served as a non-executive director on the Board of the Submarine Delivery Agency and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. He is a reservist in the Staff Corps.
Dr. Kumeren Govender (South Africa & Balliol, 2018) is the Chief Scientific Officer at the Global Pathogen Analysis Service (GPAS), a global health company dedicated to providing equitable access to cloud-based genomic sequencing analysis worldwide. Developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford and Chaired by Professor Sir John Bell, GPAS' tools have been utilized by organizations and governments on nearly every continent, serving as a critical tool for global surveillance during the COVID pandemic and for addressing future global infectious and biosecurity threats. Kumeren previously founded, Mable, the first personalized migraine start-up to use genetics and telehealth based in San Francisco, which was acquired by a large US firm in April 2023. He trained as a medical doctor in South Africa and holds a DPhil in Clinical Medicine from the University of Oxford.
By integrating figurative arts with cognitive science, robotics engineering and collaborative developments in AI, David Hanson develops robots regarded as the most human-like in the world. Hanson founded and serves as CEO of Hanson Robotics, a company whose most extraordinary outcome is Sophia, a humanoid created in 2016; Sophia is the world’s first robot citizen and the first robot Innovation Ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme. With Sophia, Hanson promotes an optimistic vision of the future of AI by demonstrating that it is possible to combine the capabilities of humans with AI. As the founder of the Global Artificial Intelligence Association, he strives for this AI to help solve many global problems. Hanson received awards from NASA, NSF, Tech Titans’ Innovator of the Year, RISD, Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial. He also co-received the 2005 AAAI first place prize for open interaction of an AI system.
Linda has spent the past 10 years bringing ideas, products, and communities to life in domains ranging from theatre, AI research, to startups in the U.S. and Asia. At Equitech Futures, she helps lead venture strategy and entrepreneurial education. Additionally, she is a product manager for an international venture incubator based in Japan and Silicon Valley. She helps first time founders innovate and build human-dented startups from idea stage to launch. She has worked in AI research at the University of Chicago and in the nonprofit sector in higher education and the arts. She received her MBA from Chicago Booth in behavioral science, strategy, and entrepreneurship and is currently based between Chicago and Tokyo.
Elizabeth Kiss (pronounced ‘quiche’) became Warden of Rhodes House and CEO of the Rhodes Trust in August 2018, the first woman to hold this position. She oversees the world’s oldest graduate scholarship, the Rhodes Scholarship, as well as several partnership programs. Before joining the Rhodes Trust, Dr. Kiss served for twelve years as president of Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia. During her tenure, Agnes Scott broke records for enrollment and retention and was named the second “Most Diversified College in America” by Time, the country’s most successful liberal arts college for graduating low-income students by the U.S. Department of Education, and the #1 Most Innovative National Liberal Arts College by U.S. News and World Report. From 1997 to 2006 Dr. Kiss served as the founding director of Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, building a university-wide interdisciplinary center focused on promoting moral reflection and commitment in personal, professional, organizational, and civic life. She has also taught at Randolph-Macon College (Virginia), at Deep Springs College (California), and at Princeton University for eight years. Dr. Kiss is a scholar of moral and political philosophy who has published on moral education, human rights, ethnic conflict and nationalism, feminist theory, and transitional justice. She received her B.A. in philosophy from Davidson College in North Carolina, becoming Davidson’s first female Rhodes Scholar and received a BPhil and DPhil in philosophy from the University of Oxford.
Mathew Lodge has 25+ years’ diverse experience in product leadership. He is currently CEO of Diffblue, an AI For Code startup, serves on the board of the Good Law Project and is Deputy Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Photographic Society. Previously he was SVP of Products and Marketing at Anaconda Inc, the most popular Python/R data science platform and COO at Weaveworks, a container and microservices start-up. Prior to that he was Vice President of VMware’s Cloud Services and co-founder for what became vCloud Air. Early in his career he built compilers and distributed systems for projects like the International Space Station, helped connect six countries to the Internet for the first time, and managed a $630m router product line at Cisco. At start-up CPlane he attempted to do SDN 10 years too early.
Gina stewards the world's largest learning network on sustainable development through the Accelerator Labs, 91 social innovation teams embedded in the United Nations Development Programme reaching 115 countries. She's been working on human rights and development work for over 20 years, but is just getting started! She has focused her development work on Asia, Eastern Europe and most recently Africa. She writes, talks about and is always looking for ways to tap into collective intelligence, learn from grassroots knowledge, and drive continuous R&D to transform the systems that will determine whether future generations will be able to meet their development needs. Her work has been acknowledged in Apolitical’s Public Service Team of the Year in 2019 ,covered in the MIT Sloan Review (Summer 2020) analyzed as a Harvard Business School Case Study (Fall 2022) and depicted in For Tomorrow, an award winning documentary on grassroots innovation available on Amazon Prime (Release date September 16th, 2022).
Angie co-founded Faculty: Europe’s leading applied AI firm and a world leader in AI safety and responsible AI deployment. Faculty combines the best of humans and AI to help organisations make better decisions through its services, products and training. So far, Faculty has built and deployed 450+ high-impact AI systems for over 250 organisations across both public and private sectors. Angie also mentors and advises various tech startups and charities. Prior to Faculty, Angie had a unique career path that involved doing academic research in physics, studying law and founding another tech startup.
Danil Mikhailov, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of data.org. With over 20 years of experience setting up multiple start-ups and leading work across a range of diverse sectors, Danil brings a focus on investigating and innovating in the space where technology, culture, and society converge. At data.org, Danil heads a talented, international team, and has driven the creation of a unique field-building organization. During his tenure, data.org has launched global data for social impact programs in climate, health, and financial inclusion to build digital public goods, train a new generation of purpose-driven data practitioners, and design sustainable data ecosystems across the globe. Prior to data.org, Danil was at Wellcome where he founded and directed the Wellcome Data Labs, an interdisciplinary team of data scientists, software developers, and social scientists, creating open-source data tools supporting Wellcome’s mission. Danil holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Communications from the University of Brunel.
Paul Miller is Managing Partner and CEO at Bethnal Green Ventures, Europe’s leading tech for good venture capital firm. He co-founded the firm in 2012 and has helped invest in and support over 150 startups that aim to create a more sustainable planet, an inclusive society and healthy lives. Paul's also written widely about supporting early stage technology ventures. Previously he was co-founder and CEO of an education technology startup and worked for two UK-based think tanks - Forum for the Future and Demos. He was awarded an OBE for services to startup investment in 2020.
Abhilash Mishra is a scientist, entrepreneur, and educator working on problems at the intersection of technology and global challenges. Abhilash is the Founder and Chief Science Officer of Equitech Futures, a talent network and applied research lab dedicated to technology for social impact. Abhilash also holds an appointment at the University of Chicago, where he is the founding director of the Xu Initiative on Technology and Public Policy. His current research is focused on understanding the potential of emerging technologies in solving global challenges and associated risks. Abhilash is trained as a physicist and holds a PhD from Caltech and an MPhys from the University of Oxford. He received the Rhodes Scholarship in 2008, the Clinton Global Initiative University Distinguished Alumni Award, the KVPY Fellowship from the Government of India, and the Goldman Sachs Global Leader Award.
Swati is the co-founder of Incite.org, which provides catalytic capital and support for startups, nonprofits, and civic organizations that work on some of our world’s biggest challenges - particularly climate change. To date, Incite has supported over 75 new companies, and dozens of nonprofits and civic organizations. The majority of Swati’s work focuses on melding entrepreneurship, technology, and high-growth teams for scale and social and environmental impact. Incite works across a broad range of sectors, and has a deep track record of supporting entrepreneurs and activists advancing climate solutions and economic opportunity creation, in particular.
Zikho's background straddles the critical intersection of law, healthcare and technology. At the age of 26, she was one of the youngest board members at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic hospital, one of the largest hospitals in the world. She is an admitted attorney by profession and she received her legal training at Bowmans, one of the largest law firms in Africa. She holds a Bachelor of laws (with distinction) from Wits University and Master of Laws from Harvard Law School. She is currently the Co-Founder and COO of Quro Medical (Pty) Ltd, a digital health company pioneering premium healthcare solutions for Africa and the emerging markets. The company’s flagship solution is the technology-enabled Hospital-at-Home service, which is the first of its kind on the continent, and on track to become the largest virtual hospital in Africa.
Adam Parr is an Anglo-French barrister and businessman, who has lived and worked in Europe, Japan, South Africa and Australia. From 2006–12, he was CEO and chairman of the Williams F1 team. Adam now chairs Oxford Semantic Technologies, an AI spin-out of the University of Oxford; Cheesecake Energy, a spin-out of the University of Nottingham, developing compressed air energy storage systems; and Homeland Conservation, a UK charity dedicated to accelerating the carbon drawdown. Homeland Conservation has helped launch Downforce®, an innovative technology for measuring natural capital, and SRI 2030, an initiative to promote climate-smart rice cultivation. Adam is a DPhil candidate and Business Fellow at the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and Research Associate at the John Porter Diplomacy Centre, Hertford College, Oxford. Adam has an MA from Cambridge University and a PhD from UCL.
Dr. Mandela Patrick (Commonwealth Caribbean & University 2018) is the Chief Executive Officer of Optimatik, a startup building the future of AI generated entertainment. Previously, he did a PhD at the University of Oxford in the world famous VGG computer vision group, where he pioneered research in multi-modal AI video and image representation learning. During his PhD, he was a research collaborator with Meta in their AI research department, where he researched core AI multi-modal algorithms for the IG Reels Recommendation system. His work has been cited over 1000 times, and he has published at the major AI/ML conferences including NeurIPS, ICCV, ICLR, and NAACL. Before Oxford, he earned a BA honors degree in Computer Science from Harvard College in 2018 with a specialization in machine learning.
Dr Ethan A. Perets is a Schmidt Science Fellow at UT Southwestern Medical Center applying imaging technologies for discovery of fundamental biology relevant to cancer, aging, and neurodegenerative diseases. Ethan conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University and completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry at Yale University. At Yale, Ethan developed laser techniques revealing that water molecules contain information about biomolecular structure, suggesting new perspectives on why life needs water and how water helped life to begin. Ethan holds a MA in Buddhist Art History and Conservation from the Courtauld Institute of Art and has experience working at the intersection of chemistry and art at major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Ethan currently serves as a Venture Fellow with Innovation Endeavors working to identify emerging, data-driven scientific opportunities for early-stage investment and development.
Emelia (Emmy) Probasco is a Senior Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), where she works on the military applications of Artificial Intelligence. Prior to joining CSET, she was the Chief Communications Officer and Communications Department Head at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), leading technical and institutional communications to support and drive APL’s strategic vision. Prior to APL, Emmy served as a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy, deploying twice to the Indo-Pacific. She also served in the Pentagon as the speechwriter to the Chief of Naval Operations and at the U.S. Naval Academy as an instructor in political science. She has masters’ degrees in Forced Migration and Economic and Social History from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a degree in Political Science from the U.S. Naval Academy.
Former serial start-up founder who continued his career in venture capital having various roles with a family office, venture builder, building and running accelerators for corporates and governments, to strategic corporate venture capital investments at Telefonica, Virgin Media O2, and teaching staff at UCL on venture capital.
A passionate geneticist, Maria Suciu is working on understanding how changes in our DNA impact our health and risk of disease. Independent, analytical mind and passionate problem solver, Maria uses statistical tools to leverage knowledge from big genetic data to inform drug discovery. She is currently focusing on identifying drug targets with strong genetic support in immune disease and women’s health. She is applying the latest technology in genetic research to understudied conditions such as endometriosis, and has garnered wide interest from the genetics community. As part of her work, she developed and published analysis tools in both academic and industry settings. Maria earned her Ph.D. in Genomic Medicine and Statistics from the University of Oxford in 2015, her Master of Science degree from University College London in Prenatal Genetics and Fetal Medicine in 2011, and a Bachelor of Science from Jacobs University Bremen in 2010. She currently works at Regeneron Genetics Center in Tarrytown, NY.
Sophia, Hanson Robotics’ most advanced and celebrated AI-powered human-like robot, personifies our dreams for the future of AI. As a unique combination of science, engineering, and artistry, Sophia serves simultaneously as a science fiction character depicting the future of AI and robotics, and a technology platform for AI research and uses such as education, healthcare, hospitality, retail and the arts. With her remarkable robotic hardware and interactive AI, Sophia simulates a full range of facial expressions, tracks and recognizes faces, looks people in the eye, and holds natural conversations with you. Sophia made her debut at South x Southwest in March 2016. Since then, she became a much-sought-after media personality, appearing in news media and talk shows, including CBS 60 Minutes with Charlie Rose, the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Good Morning Britain. As an accomplished speaker, Sophia hosted some of the world’s most prestigious conferences, addressing members of the United Nations General Assembly, NATO summit, and the World Trade Organization public forum. She was named the world’s first United Nation Innovation Champion by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and served as brand ambassador for Emirates airline, Maybelline, AUDI’s annual report, and graced the cover of ELLE magazine, Vogue and Cosmo. Sophia’s press coverage has a potential reach of over ten billion readers. Sophia now serves ongoing AI research in human-robots interaction (HRI), embodied AI, machine consciousness and AGI research, in collaboration among Hanson AI, SingularityNet and other research institutions. Research using Sophia has won the Edison Prize Gold, Frost and Sullivan Awards, and best paper award at Neurips 2022 (in collaboration with HKUST). The latest Sophia developments promise to disrupt the world of AI and robotics with human-AI symbiosis as a new paradigm for the intelligent future of humanity.
Shukri Toefy is the CEO of Southfields, the founder of several companies, keynote speaker, strategic advisor and board director to numerous organisations around the world. He holds a degree in Law and Politics from the University of Cape Town, lectures at several universities around the world, and is an Entrepreneurship Expert at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Shukri has consulted to some of the most exciting brands and organisations in the world including NASA and Google. He also sits on the Advisory Board of the Global Solutions Summit - World Policy Forum. Shukri has won awards in Amsterdam, LA, Rome, Cannes and is an EY World Entrepreneur finalist. He has been profiled in various publications including Forbes, Huffington Post, GQ, Marketing Week, Creativity and AdAge, and has been named a Top 40 CEO by Under40CEOs, and one of Fast Company’s Most Productive People.
Forum Moderator
Uljad Berdica is a Rhodes Scholar from Albania studying for a PhD in Engineering Science under the Center for Doctoral Training in Autonomous Intelligent Machines and Systems. He is a member of the Foerster Lab for AI Research and the Soft Robotics Lab of the Oxford Robotics Institute. He works at the intersection of developing controllers through open-ended exploration, sim2real adaptations and emergent complexity via synthetic environments. His reserach experiences include cyber-security, Simultaneous Localization and Mapping in robotics, Computer Vision, and AI Safety. Prior to Oxford, Uljad received a Bachelor of Science with Great Distinction in Electrical Engineering from NYU.
Billy is a Rhodes Scholar who recently completed his MSc in Advanced Computer Science and an MBA from the University of Oxford. While there, he was an active team member and leader in OxAI, Oxford's AI society's Entrepreneurship hub. Before Oxford, he earned his BSc in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh and co-founded an EdTech initiative. He has conducted research in machine learning, delving into reinforcement learning, graph theories, and neuroscience-inspired architectures. Currently, Billy is with Moonah Technologies, leveraging digital assets to tackle trade payment challenges in inflationary economies.
Sorina is currently overseeing the design and delivery of the alumni programmes portfolio for the Rhodes Trust. Sorina’s career is based on building purpose-led global communities and channelling their energy towards delivering impactful initiatives, through mission-inspired programming. She joined the Rhodes Trust from the Oxford Saïd Entrepreneurship Centre, where she was leading on partnerships and stakeholder engagement, and was instrumental in creating initiatives that increased opportunities for alumni engagement and growth in the Oxford ecosystem and beyond. Previously, Sorina served as Leadership Programs Director for The Aspen Institute office in Bucharest, where she managed one of the most prestigious leadership fellowships in CEE and the Caucasus. Sorina is a founding member of the World Economic Forum's Global Shapers Bucharest Hub. She holds a BSc in international relations from the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies and a Master of Research in political and social sciences from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.
Jeffrey Fasegha (Prairies & Jesus 2021) is deeply passionate about entrepreneurship and using innovation as a tool for economic and social development. He currently leads Product and Growth at Mash, a startup building better ways to monetize media without relying on invasive ads or high-friction subscriptions. Prior to this, Jeffrey was Co-Founder and CEO of Fyyne, a Canadian startup building business operation software for independent beauty artists. Fyyne recently exited to Bumpa, the “Shopify for Africa.” While at Oxford, Jeffrey completed his MSc in African Studies and MBA, both with a focus on the Nigerian digital economy.
Clare Lyle (Québec & University, 2018) is a research scientist at Google DeepMind, where she studies optimization in neural networks and deep reinforcement learning. She completed her PhD at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Yarin Gal and Marta Kwiatkowska, where she was the recipient of an Open Philanthropy AI Fellowship. Prior to her doctoral studies, she interned with the Governance of Artificial Intelligence group at the Future of Humanity Institute and at Google Brain Montreal.
Rachael is currently reading a Master's of Public Policy at Oxford. In 2021, she built a 14x14’ log cabin by hand in West Virginia. After that summer, she read a Master's in Social Science of the Internet which was primarily focused on the normative power of digital architectures. Rachael is interested in the space between that cabin and the contemporary technologies that we will be discussing in this panel.
Varun Shankar is a DPhil candidate in Engineering Science as a Rhodes Scholar from Zambia. He is passionate about accelerating the transition to low-carbon mobility with a focus on reducing transport emissions and improving air quality. He is currently a Climate Fellow at the Oxford SDG Impact Lab in partnership with Neste, Extreme E, and Rosberg Philanthropies investigating the decarbonisation of the maritime sector with a case study of the St Helena ship. His previous experience includes conducting detailed life cycle assessments, net-zero roadmap design, battery supply chain evaluations, coastal blue carbon offsetting, and advancing climate resilient infrastructure with the World Bank and AFRY Management Consulting. Prior to Oxford, he completed an MEng in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bath.
LTJG Lillian Ngo Usadi graduated and was commissioned from the United States Naval Academy with a BS in electrical engineering. She then joined the Physical Acoustics Lab reading for an MSc in Engineering Science (by research) under the direction of Dr. Ronald Roy and Dr. James Kwan at the University of Oxford. She is currently researching the phenomena of acoustic cavitation, bubble formation in liquid in the presence of a sound field. Following her time at Oxford, she will go on to the United States Navy as a submarine officer. Her long-term career goals include the pursuit of the advancement of science and technology through her work in the submarine community and beyond.