Carnegie Mellon University
June 15, 2021

David Danks among Five CMU Faculty Selected for Amazon Research Awards

David Danks is among five Carnegie Mellon University faculty members to receive funding in its latest round of Amazon Research Awards.

Katerina Fragkiadaki, Ruben Martins and Heather Miller from the School of Computer Science; and Sivaraman Balakrishnan and David Danks in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences received fellowships.

The awards provide funding, access to Amazon public datasets, and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning services and tools. Each award is intended to support one year of work for one to two graduate students or postdoctoral students with faculty supervision. Amazon provided 101 awards to recipients from 59 universities.

Research by Danks, the L.L. Thurstone Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, will evaluate the impact of data-driven algorithms making decisions that ultimately affect people. The project will develop a framework for understanding, evaluating and regulating algorithm-assisted decision making for situations where the outcome determined by the algorithm shouldn't be a decision but rather a predictive recommendation provided to humans, who will ultimately make the decisions.

David Danks is affiliated with the Neuroscience Institute. View the full article, including information about the other recipients of the award, on the main CMU website.