Jeremy Pitt The IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology announces the selection of Jeremy Pitt, Professor of Intelligent and Self-Organizing Systems at Imperial College, London, U.K., as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, beginning January 1, 2018.
Professor Katina Michael of Wollongong University, Australia, will complete her second accomplished three-year term as T&S EIC in December of 2017.
“Our new EIC is internationally recognized, has led European-wide research initiatives, and brings a unique skillset to the T&S community at large,” said Michael.
Professor Pitt is Deputy Head of the Intelligent Systems and Networks Group at Imperial College. He has Guest Edited several special issues and sections of T&S over the past four years, as well as serving as an Associate Editor. His research interests focus on developing formal models of social processes using computational logic, and their application in self-organizing multi-agent systems, for example fair and sustainable common-pool resource management in ad hoc and sensor networks. He also has strong interests in human-computer interaction, the design and use of socio-technical systems, and (of course) the social impact of technology. He teaches courses on artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction, and lectures on professional engineering with an emphasis on responsibility for ethical design.
“Building on the foundations that Katina has established, I’m really looking forward to the opportunities and challenges in taking T&S forward,” said Pitt. “With so many environmental and humanitarian problems facing the planet, I don’t think scientists and technologists can distance themselves from the legal, social and political implications of their discoveries and inventions any longer. As has been often said, technology is neither good nor bad—but it is not neutral either, if only because design is never neutral.”
“I encourage all readers to engage with Jeremy’s seminal contributions over the years,” said Michael, “including two of his most recent edited volumes, This Pervasive Day: The Potential and Perils of Pervasive Computing (2012), and The Computer After Me: Awareness and Self-awareness in Autonomic Systems (2014),” published by Imperial College Press. “Jeremy’s interdisciplinary research in the area of social justice and computing is by far among the most important discussions we have to have,” she continued, “as we embark on implementations of AI and robotics towards collective awareness.”
Professor Pitt can be reached at j.pitt@imperial.ac.uk.
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