Canada Research Chair in Data Ethics

Eran Tal

Associate Professor of Philosophy at McGill University
Canada Research Chair in Data Ethics

About

Eran Tal’s work deals with the epistemic and ethical dimensions of data collection, data analysis and data use in the sciences. He has contributed to the philosophy of measurement, an area within philosophy of science that deals with the concepts and problems involved in designing, operating and interpreting measurement procedures. His current research projects concern the conceptual foundations of psychometrics, the responsible design and use of mental health questionnaires, and the ethical and social implications of big data and machine learning in medicine.

Eran Tal joined the Philosophy Department at McGill in 2016, after holding fellowships at the University of Cambridge and Bielefeld University. He has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto (2012) and an MA in History and Philosophy of Science from Tel Aviv University (2006). 

Sebastian Rodriguez Duque

Philosophy PhD Candidate at McGill University

About

Sebastian Rodriguez Duque is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at McGill University. His research interests lie at the intersection of empirical issues in the philosophy of mind, agency, and ethics. He holds an MA in Philosophy from Carleton University, where his research focus was on automaticity; his thesis title was “The Moral Status of Automatic Behaviour”. Currently he is interested in issues in the measurement of conscious mental states and the relationship between conscious mental states and behavioural outputs.

Asya Ciftci

Philosophy PhD student at McGill University

About

Ruken Asya Ciftci is a PhD student at McGill University. Her academic interests encompass the philosophy of science, the philosophy of physics, and neighboring issues in metaphysics and epistemology. She holds a BSc in Physics and a BA in Philosophy from Middle East Technical University. Before coming to McGill, she worked on various topics in high-energy physics, including neutrino oscillations and QCD Sum Rules, and was a member of the CMS and Belle 2 experiments at CERN and KEK, respectively.

Maryna Nekrasova

Philosophy PhD student at McGill University

About

Maryna Nekrasova is a PhD student and Tomlinson Scholar in the Philosophy department at McGill University. Her academic interests are in the philosophy of AI, ethics of technology, and epistemology. Her primary research focuses on examining how cultural factors influence people’s perceptions of and interactions with artificial intelligence systems. By gaining an understanding of these beliefs and perceptions, her research seeks to explain why we are led to fear, mischaracterize, and make particular ethical judgments about AI. She holds a B.Hum degree from Carleton University.

Yasmin Haddad

Postdoctoral Fellow, Dalhousie University

About

Yasmin Haddad is a postdoctoral fellow with a dual appointment at the Department of Molecular Biology and the Department of Philosophy at Dalhousie University. Her areas of specialty are philosophy of science, philosophy of biology and data ethics. Presently, she is interested in the pragmatic and ethical dimensions of clustering humans in genomics. She is also interested in how human genomic data is collected, interpreted, and analyzed in large-scale studies. As of 2024, Yasmin will be FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellow for her project “Rethinking Our Individual Differences Through Genomics”. She holds a PhD from McGill University where she defended her thesis titled “Beyond the Divide: The Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Developmental Biology”.