Solon Barocas

Timeline

1. 2015

   Princeton policy research

   By July 2015, he works as a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy. By 2015, he holds a doctorate in NYU's Department of Media, Culture, and Communication.

2. 2017

   Civil rights and data science

   In 2017, he coauthors “Big Data, Data Science, and Civil Rights,” which proposes research to detect model bias, build fairness into machine learning, improve transparency and control, examine problem formulation, and support cross-disciplinary work.

3. 2017

   Courses behind a fairness textbook

   In fall 2017, he teaches fairness and ethics in machine learning at Cornell. With Moritz Hardt and Arvind Narayanan, he develops Fairness and Machine Learning from notes for their courses.

4. 2018

   Teaching AI ethics at Cornell

   In 2018, he teaches Cornell's Ethics and Policy in Data Science course on bias and discrimination in machine learning.

5. 2018

   Organizing a fairness conference

   In 2018, he leads the first conference on fairness, accountability, and transparency in algorithmic systems.

6. As of October 2026

   Microsoft Research and Cornell

   As of October 2026, he is a Senior Principal Researcher in Microsoft Research's New York City lab and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Information Science at Cornell. He co-leads Cornell's Artificial Intelligence, Policy, and Practice initiative. His research explores fairness in machine learning, accountability in automated decisions, and the privacy implications of inference.