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Research

Conducting interdisciplinary research.

Developing safe and beneficial AI demands collaboration across disciplines and sectors. While high-level ethical principles provide essential guidance, we recognize that ethical challenges must be understood within their specific, local contexts.

In partnership with industry and nonprofit organizations, we focus on four core research areas:

  1. Information Integrity: How do we maintain trust in our information ecosystems? What tools and educational approaches can preserve institutional credibility and help the public evaluate information quality?
  2. AI Alignment and Safety: How do we ensure that AI systems and agents behave in predictable, interpretable, and transparent ways?
  3. Global Ethics: How do we develop culturally intelligent and socially grounded AI experiences that serve diverse communities? What are different conceptual differences to data rights?
  4. AI Governance and Accountability: What research is needed to support regulatory frameworks and ethical standards that protect individuals from harm and preserve human autonomy?

View our work.

Below is a list of selected materials, including publications, book chapters, articles, workshops, public commentaries, and other works supported by the Renwick Program.

2026

  • Schmer-Galunder, S. (2026). The AI Monoculture: Preserving Human Diversity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. In Computers with Salaries and Cemeteries: AI Ethics from Industry to Philosophy to Science Fiction. Springer Nature AG, Switzerland. [Forthcoming.] https://www.amazon.com/Computers-Salaries-Cemeteries-Industry-Philosophy/dp/3032031680
  • Dutt, R., Liu, K. & Schmer-Galunder S. (2026). Smart City Ethics and Ethical Dilemmas: A Critical Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Springer Nature [Forthcoming.]
  • Grant, David Gray ; Purves, Duncan & Sturm, Schuyler (forthcoming). Against the Causal Account of Algorithmic Fairness. Synthese.
  • Schmer-Galunder, S. (2026). Culture in the Code: Anthropological Concepts Decoding AI’s Hidden Assumptions. AI and Ethics. [In Print]
  • Schmer-Galunder, S. (2026). Anthropology for AI. Collegium Antropologicum (Journal of the Croatian Anthropological Society), 1–6. https://www.collantropol.hr/antropo/issue/current
  • Barbara J. Evans, Ph.D., J.D., Comments on National Institutes of Health Request for Information on Draft NIH Controlled-Access Data Policy and Proposed Revisions to the NIH Genomic Data Sharing Policy (NOT-OD-26-023, December 17, 2024) (filed March 17, 2026) (addressing compliance of NIH Controlled-Access Data Repositories with the U.S. Department of Justice Data Security Program regulations 28 C.F.R. Part 202)
  • Eric S. Rosenthal, M.D., and Barbara J. Evans, Ph.D., J.D., Comments on National Institutes of Health Request for Information on Draft NIH Controlled-Access Data Policy and Proposed Revisions to the NIH Genomic Data Sharing Policy (NOT-OD-26-023, December 17, 2026) (filed March 17, 2026) (addressing compliance of NIH Controlled Access Data Repositories with requirements for hosting and sharing real-world clinical data used in NIH-funded research under the Common Rule exemption at 45 C.F.R. § 46.104(d)(4)(iii))
  • Barbara J. Evans, The Law of Open Medical Data: Past Application and Future Challenges, 13 Journal of Law and the Biosciences 1-55 (2026), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41766930/
  • Barbara J. Evans, Eric S. Rosenthal &Azra Bihorac, Reconceiving Safety Regulation for AI/ML Medical Software,28 Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law 1-47 (2026)
  • Michael Young, David A. Simon &  Barbara J. Evans, Safeguarding Brain Data (forthcoming in Neurology, March/April 2026)
  • C. Goldberg, R. D. Balicer, M. Bhat, D. Blumenthal, R. W. Brendel, E. Brondolo, J. S. Brownstein, T. A. Buckley, C. H. Cain, P. Chandak, F. Chessa, A. Chopra, N. Dagan, K. S. Ehlert, B. J. Evans, R. Freeman, B. S. Glicksberg, W. Gordon, M. I. Gröschel, S. Hoffman, E. M. Hundert, S. Hyare, S. Johri, J. Joseph, M. Klote, A. B. Landman, Z. S. Lee, J. C. Mandel, K. D. Mandl, A. K. Manrai, M. Might, G. N. Nadkarni, D. J. Nigrin, A. Noori, G. S. Omenn, E. Parimbelli, A. L. Rosenberg, D. Stutz, M. Tory, E. Tunik, S. M. Wolf, M. Zitnik, and I. Kohane, The Missing Dimension in Clinical AI: Making Hidden Values Visible, 3 NEJM AI (published January 22, 2026) https://doi.org/10.1056/AIp2501266

2025

  • Smaldino, P. E., Russell, A., Zefferman, M. R., Donath, J., Foster, J. G., Guilbeault, D., Hilbert, M., Hobson, E. A., Lerman, K., Miton, H., Moser, C., Lasser, J., Schmer-Galunder, S., Shapiro, J. N., Zhong, Q., & Patt, D. (2025). Information architectures: A framework for understanding socio-technical systems. npj Complexity, 2(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44260-025-00037-z
  • Barbara J. Evans, Impact of the U.S. Department of Justice Data Security Program on Genomic Data Sharing, 25(11) American Journal of Bioethics 58-61 (2025), online ahead of print November 18, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2025.2570670 (invited peer commentary on Kayte Spector-Bagdady, The Genetic Data Market: Institutional Governance of Academic/Industry Research Partnerships for the Public Good), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41252512/
  • Ellen Wright Clayton, Susannah Rose, Camille Nebecker, Laurie Novak, Yael Bensoussan, You Chen, Benjamin X. Collins, Ashley Cordes, Barbara J. Evans, Kadija S. Ferryman, Samantha Hurst, Xiaoqian Jiang, Aaron Y. Lee, Shannon McWeeney, Jillian Parker, Jean-Christophe Belisle-Pipon, Eric Rosenthal, Zhijun Yin, Joseph Yracheta, Bradley Adam Malin, for the Bridge2AI Ethics Working Group, Biomedical Data Repositories Require Governance for AI/ML Applications at Every Step, 8(6) Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association Open 1-8 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1093/jamiaopen/ooaf134
  • Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon, James Anibal, Ruth Bahr, Steven Bedrick, Oita Coleman, David Dorr, Barbara J. Evans, Guy Fagherazzi, Alexander Gelbard, Satrajit Ghosh, Anita Ho, Christie Jackson, Dale Joachim, Lampros Kourtis, Andrea Krussel, Amir Lahav, Breanna Leuze, Bob MacDonald, Geralyn Miller, Vivek Mohan, Matthew Naunheim, Maria Powell, Anaïs Rameau, Sat Ramphal, Vardit Ravitsky, Charlie Reavis, Samantha Salvi Cruz, Jamie Toghranegar, AdamVogel, Stephanie Watts, Joseph Yracheta, Robin Zhao, The Bridge2AI-Voice Consortium and Yael Bensoussan, Interactive Panel Discussions from the 2024 Voice AI Symposium, 7 Frontiers in Digital Health 1-8 (2025), https://doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2025.1484521
  • Einarsson, Alexander, Simen Oestmo, Lester Wollman, Duncan Purves, and Ryan Jenkins. 2025. “A Debiasing Technique for Place-Based Algorithmic Patrol Management.” Criminal Justice Ethics 44 (3): 330–50. doi:10.1080/0731129X.2025.2583681

2024

  • Barbara J. Evans & Azra Bihorac, Co-creating consent for data use in medical AI: AI- powered research oversight to RAISE privacy, equity, and trust, NEJM-AI (accepted May 16, 2024, forthcoming 2024) 
  • Barbara J. Evans, FDA Regulation of Physicians’ Professional Speech, JOURNAL OF FREE SPEECH LAW (in press, forthcoming in vol. 4, issue 5, pages 1-48 (Summer 2024) in a special issue entitled “Information as Medicine”)
  • Barbara J. Evans, The HIPAA Privacy Rule at Age 25: Privacy for Equitable AI, 50 FSU LAW REVIEW 741-810 (2023, published in print May 2024)
  • Carey Beth Goldberg, Laura Adams, David Blumenthal, Patricia Flatley Brennan, Noah Brown, Atul J. Butte, Morgan Cheatham, Dave deBronkart, Jennifer Dixon, Jeffrey Drazen, Barbara J. Evans, Sara M Hoffman, Chris Holmes, Peter Lee, Arjun Kumar Manrai, Gilbert S. Omenn, Jonathan B. Perlin, Rachel Ramoni, Guillermo Sapiro, Rupa Sarkar, Harpreet Sood, Effy Vayena, Isaac S. Kohane; RAISE Consortium, To do no harm – and the most good – with AI in health care, NATURE MEDICINE (published online ahead of print February 22, 2024) PMID: 38388841, DOI 10.1038/s41591-024-02853-7
  • Schmer-Galunder, S., Wheelock, R., Jalan, Z., Chvasta, A., Friedman, S., et al. (2024). Annotator in the loop: A case study of in-depth rater engagement to create a prosocial benchmark dataset. Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, 7, 1319-1328.
  • Smart, A., Wang, D., Monk, E., Díaz, M., Kasirzadeh, A., Van Liemt, E., Schmer-Galunder, S. et al. (2024). Discipline and label: A weird genealogy and social theory of data annotation. arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.06811.
  • Smart, A., Hutchinson, B., Amugongo, L. M., Dikker, S., Zito, A., Ebinama, A., Wudiri, Z., Wang, D., van Liemt, E., Sedoc, J., Olojo, S., Uwakwe, S., Wornyo, E., Schmer-Galunder, S., & Smith-Loud, J. (2024). Socially responsible data for large multilingual language models. arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.05247.
  • Friedman, S. E., Benkler, N., Mosaphir, D., Rye, J., Schmer-Galunder, S. M., Goldwater, M., … & Miller, C. (2024). Bottom-Up and Top-Down Analysis of Values, Agendas, and Observations in Corpora and LLMs. arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.05040. Paper presented at Pluralistic Alignment Workshop at NeurIPS, Vancouver, December 2024.
  • Brugnone, N., Benkler, N., Revay, P., Myhre, R., Friedman, S., Schmer-Galunder, S., … & Gentile, J. (2024). Is from ought? A comparison of unsupervised methods for structuring values-based wisdom-of-crowds estimates. Journal of Computational Social Science, 1-51.
  • Benkler, N., Friedman, S., Schmer-Galunder, S., Mosaphir, D. Goldman, R., Wheelock, R., Sarathy, V., Kantharaju, P. and McLure, M. (2024). Recognizing Value Resonance with Resonance-Tuned RoBERTa Task Definition, Experimental Validation, and Robust Modeling. Paper accepted at The 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation, Torini, Italy, May 10-15, 2024.

2023

  • Barbara J. Evans, Comments on Medical Devices; Laboratory Developed Tests (Docket No. FDA-2023-N-2177, December 3, 2023), published December 22, 2023 https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FDA-2023-N-2177-6367
  • Barbara J. Evans, Citizen Petition – Requesting prompt withdrawal of FDA’s CDS Guidance which subjects physicians’ professional speech to content-based regulation violating the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (Docket No. FDA-2023-P-2808, July 7, 2023), published July 10, 2023 https://www.regulations.gov/document/FDA-2023-P-2808-0001
  • Benkler, N., Mosaphir, D., Friedman, S., Smart, A., & Schmer-Galunder, S. (2023). Assessing LLMs for Moral Value Pluralism. Paper accepted an NeurIPS workshop AI meets Moral Philosophy and Moral Psychology, December 15th, 2023. arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.10075.