Rediet Abebe
Assistant professor of computer science at UC Berkeley
An Ethiopian computer scientist at UC Berkeley who works on algorithms and AI for inequality and co-founded Black in AI.
Biography
Rediet Abebe is an Ethiopian computer scientist working in algorithms and artificial intelligence, and an assistant professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Born in Addis Ababa in 1991, she studied mathematics and applied mathematics at Harvard, completed a Master of Advanced Studies in pure mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and earned a PhD in computer science at Cornell under Jon Kleinberg. She is the first Black woman to complete a computer science PhD at Cornell.
Her research develops mathematical and computational frameworks for examining inequality and distributive justice. She co-founded Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG) in 2016 and, with Timnit Gebru, co-founded Black in AI, a network of 1,500 researchers. She became a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows in 2019, served on the NIH Working Group on AI that year, and was named to MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 in 2019. Her dissertation won the 2020 ACM SIGKDD Dissertation Award. At Berkeley she is the first Black woman professor in the history of her department.
Notable contributions
Co-founded Black in AI
With Timnit Gebru, co-founded Black in AI in 2016, a network of researchers working on AI that organizes workshops and supports Black researchers in the field.
Co-founded Mechanism Design for Social Good
Co-founded MD4SG in 2016, a multi-disciplinary research collective that uses algorithms and mechanism design to tackle inequality.
Won the ACM SIGKDD Dissertation Award
Her Cornell dissertation received the 2020 ACM SIGKDD Dissertation Award and an honorable mention for the ACM SIGecom Dissertation Award.
Named an MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35
Honored in 2019 as one of MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35, in part for co-founding MD4SG.