Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program

News

Seminar students enjoy Lansing Day 2026

May 26, 2026

Ranging from first-year undergraduates to advanced doctoral candidates, students met with elected officials and their staff to advocate for bills addressing data center regulation, data privacy, and maternal health.

Students posing with State Senator Stephanie Chang

Publication

Parthasarathy proposes people-first technology regulation

May 21, 2026

In her latest column for Science, Ford School Professor Shobita Parthasarathy argues that while governments and tech industries oppose regulation in order to stimulate innovation, marginalized communities face compounding risks in the process, becomi...

Parthasarathy proposes people-first technology regulation

News

Kleinman shares expertise and concerns regarding facial recognition in schools

Apr 29, 2026 Michigan Public

STPP Managing Director Molly Kleinman was recently interviewed by Michigan Public regarding the use of facial recognition in schools to identify and verify visitors. Kleinman argued that facial recognition brings an element of surveillance into schoo...

Kleinman shares expertise and concerns regarding facial recognition in schools

Publication

New nuclear requires strong governance to avoid making old mistakes

Dec 1, 2025

University of Michigan researchers call for policies to ensure that small modular reactors serve the public interest without creating and worsening familiar problems. Nuclear energy has long been considered essential for meeting growing global energy...

New nuclear requires strong governance to avoid making old mistakes

Policy Matters

Karen Hao inspires community empowerment in the face of the AI empire

Nov 21, 2025

I had the opportunity to meet Karen Hao, author of the bestselling book Empire of AI, who came to the Ford School for a special conversation with students in October. Hao's bottom line: Beyond GenAI's sleek public interface lies a more intentional pu...

Karen Hao inspires community empowerment in the face of the AI empire

News

Podcast: U-M experts explore AI and the responsibility of its creators in building, guiding it toward best uses

May 30, 2025

Artificial intelligence is often debated in terms of being a cure-all or chaos agent, as if independent of its human creators. Neither is the case, nor should we forget who makes it and why, and how it should serve humanity. That's the backbone of th...

Shobita Parthasarathy’s “Expert Voices” column in Science: Beware the drive to scale technology

News

Hassan to examine social dimensions of Africa's data infrastructure and data economy

Mar 26, 2025

Yousif Hassan, assistant professor at the Ford School of Public Policy and the School of Information, has been awarded funding from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) for a new project Defining and Measuring the Sustain...

Hassan to examine social dimensions of Africa's data infrastructure and data economy

News

Viewing Asilomar from the Global South

Jan 31, 2025

Fifty years ago, the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA convened 140 life scientists from the U.S. and the UK to anticipate potential risks in the emerging biotechnology field to help inform rules and regulations. The conference was celebrated as...

The politics of inclusive innovation in international development: Menstrual hygiene management and sanitary pads in India

News

STPP to establish Michigan science and technology fellowship

Nov 14, 2024

The Ford School of Public Policy’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program (STPP) is poised to create a new pathway for early career scientists and engineers to learn about, develop, and aid state-level policy making. A $100,00 planning and de...

STPP to establish Michigan science and technology fellowship

In the Media

Companies should take responsibility on deepfake pornography - Parthasarathy

Jul 2, 2024 Michigan Advance

Shobita Parthasarathy, Ford School professor director of Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, discussed the Michigan bill lawmakers are working on to address the rise of non-consensual deepfake pornography. She said, “I worry about placing ...

Publication

STPP releases analysis of Biden’s Executive Order on Safe AI and the EU AI Act

Jun 13, 2024

As artificial intelligence technologies proliferate in industries across the globe, governments around the world are working to regulate how and when these technologies are used. In October 2023, President Joe Biden signed the Executive Order on Safe...

Illustration of US and EU flags combined

State & Hill

Faculty Findings, spring 2024

Apr 24, 2024

Innovation that benefits societyInclusive innovation—the idea of introducing technologies designed for and by the poor to boost economic growth in impoverished communities—often misses the real problems facing these communities and champions solutio...

State & Hill

The Last Word: Molly Kleinman

Dec 12, 2023

Molly Kleinman (MSI ’07, PhD CSHPE ’18) joined the Ford School’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) program in 2018 and became managing director in 2021. She received her STPP certificate in 2014 and served as Paul Courant’s special assist...

News

Surveillance technology can have unintended consequences, Kleinman tells The New York Times

Apr 2, 2023

Nationwide, police departments are integrating facial recognition technology into their investigative processes. The technology has been criticized as "exacerbating racist policies," because of false identification, especially among African American ...

STPP brings interdisciplinary, historical perspectives to public interest technology issues

Publication

Ethical implications of defense funding in social science

Mar 22, 2023

Since World War I, defense funding has been a driver of social science’s growth. The dense ties between social science and defense agencies benefitted social research but also attracted decades of heavy criticism. This long and entangled history has ...

Ethical implications of defense funding in social science

In the Media

AI will 'turbocharge' inequalities in health care - Parthasarathy

Mar 16, 2023 Bridge Michigan

Shobita Parthasarathy, Bridge Michigan: "Health care systems don't even know what data they're missing. That (AI) gets integrated into medical care as a mechanism for achieving efficiency. But they do that without realizing that it's going to essenti...

In the Media

Parthasarathy weighs in on implications of ChatGPT

Feb 6, 2023 Nature

Shobita Parthasarathy, Nature: "Besides directly producing toxic content, there are concerns that AI chatbots will embed historical biases or ideas about the world from their training data, such as the superiority of particular cultures, says Shobita...

Parthasarathy: ChatGPT reinforces human biases

News

Green discusses the fairness of algorithms at Harvard University

Jan 10, 2023

Postdoctoral scholar Ben Green recently joined Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society for a webinar focused on what fairness means in the context of algorithms and how fairness can be measured. Joined by other scholars stu...

Using algorithms in government: Opportunities, challenges, and paths forward

News

U-M online course centers equity and justice in technology policy

Nov 30, 2022

A new massive open online course available on Michigan Online will help STEM and policy professionals, community organizers, and students understand how injustices can become embedded in technology and associated policies. “Justice and Equity in Tech...

U-M online course centers equity and justice in technology policy

News

Parthasarathy discusses implications of Large Language Models

Nov 7, 2022

Large Language Models (LLMs) are artificial intelligence tools that can read, summarize and translate texts and predict future words in a sentence letting them generate sentences similar to how humans talk and write. Shobita Parthasarathy, professor ...

News

Ford School faculty contribute to Anti-Racism Hiring Initiative

Oct 31, 2022

Three Ford School faculty members have played an integral role in U-M's Anti-Racism Hiring Initiative, providing expertise and guidance to the initiative. The Anti-Racism Hiring Initiative is led by the Office of the Provost and aims to bring 21 ne...

Ford School faculty contribute to Anti-Racism Hiring Initiative

News

STPP students awarded second place in science policy writing competition

Oct 30, 2022

A group of Science, Technology, and Public Policy program students recently won second place in the National Science Policy Network's 2022 Science Policy Writing Competition. This year's competition challenged authors to create a policy brief based o...

Science, Technology, and Public Policy graduate certificate information session

In the Media

Khumbah encourages business and industrial sector in Zimbabwe to embrace new opportunities

Sep 20, 2022 Pan African Visions

Nkem Khumbah, faculty associate for the Science, Technology and Public Policy program, recently delivered a keynote speech at the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) Annual Congress. In the speech, he outlined the steps he believed Zimbabwe's ...

Khumbah encourages business and industrial sector in Zimbabwe to embrace new opportunities

In the Media

Parthasarathy warns gun safety policy could have chilling impact on privacy

Sep 20, 2022 NPR

Major credit card companies announced this week that they will adopt a new code to flag gun sales. While gun control advocates are celebrating, Shobita Parthasarathy, director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy program, warns the policy cou...

In the Media

Parthasarathy comments on new ARPA-H director

Sep 13, 2022 Nature

President Joe Biden recently named Renee Wegrzyn as the inaugural director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a new agency tasked with finding innovative solutions to biomedical problems. Nature asked Shobita Parthasarathy,...

In the Media

Kleinman weighs in on Detroit ShotSpotter debate

Sep 8, 2022 Axios

As the Detroit City Council debates expanding ShotSpotter, a tool that identifies the sound of gunshots, Molly Kleinman, managing director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy program, weighed in. "There are things they could be doing with...

In the Media

Parthasarathy considers dangers of Beverly Hills's surveillance system

Apr 25, 2022 Los Angeles Times

There is one camera for every 17 people in Beverly Hills, one of the most surveilled cities in the world. Shobita Parthasarathy, professor of public policy and director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, discussed the dangers of t...

News

STPP Student Zachary Sluzala Interns at Heritage Foundation

Mar 15, 2022

By Zack Sluzala, Neuroscience Ph.D. Candidate & STPP certificate student Last semester I took a leave of absence from my Neuroscience Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan to complete a health policy fellowship with the Heritage Foundation,...

News

Parthasarathy calls for equitable innovation in science and technology

Mar 4, 2022

Recently, Shobita Parthasarathy appeared on the Issues in Science and Technology podcast, The Ongoing Transformation, to discuss her article, "Innovation as a Force for Equity." "As someone who is dedicated to the project of equity and justice in t...

Publication

Green explores tech ethics and its boundaries in new paper

Feb 4, 2022

Who gets to define the ethics behind the use of technology in society? The discussion has become more pressing amid controversies related to misinformation, privacy, and algorithmic bias. Ben Green explores this question as editor of a special iss...