Brown CS News

The Computing Research Association (CRA) is a coalition of more than 200 organizations with the mission of enhancing innovation by joining with industry, government, and academia to strengthen research and advance education in computing. This year, they launched the CRA Trustworthy AI Research Fellowship, sponsored by Microsoft. It supports early-career computing researchers who bring interdisciplinary expertise from the social sciences to infuse ethical and societal perspectives into Trustworthy AI development, and Brown CS and Brown University Data Institute (DSI) faculty member Diana Freed was one of the inaugural recipients.

Running from June of 2025 through August of 2026, the fellowship offers structured interdisciplinary training and collaborative research opportunities aimed at addressing critical societal questions surrounding AI. It begins with an introductory virtual meeting in July of 2025, followed by a four-day, in-person field school in August. Quarterly virtual meetings throughout the year will sustain collaboration and advance fellows’ research. Fellows will engage with experts across disciplines, contribute to the development of a national Trustworthy AI lexicon and framework, lead initiatives at CRA partner institutions, and help establish a scalable model for interdisciplinary Trustworthy AI training.

A member of the Brown CS and DSI faculty since 2024, Diana is involved in an emerging area of computer science focused on building and designing technologies specifically to improve online safety and well-being for vulnerable and marginalized populations globally. Her research focuses on digital security and privacy, as well as developing and evaluating technologies for mental health and chronic conditions. She combines techniques from computer security, privacy, human-computer interaction, psychology, and law to develop new tools, technologies, and theories to detect and mitigate technology-enabled abuse.

Diana teaches CSCI 1953-A Accessible and Inclusive Cybersecurity and Privacy and co-teaches CSCI 1302 Intro to Sociotechnical Systems and HCI. She’s currently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, the Petrie-Flom Center, and a Faculty Associate at Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Her recent honors include a joint Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Research and Computation (CRCS) at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and at The Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University as well as Special Recognition as a Reviewer at CHI 2023 and a 2020-2022 Meta Research PhD Fellowship that put her in the top 1.8% of applicants.

The full list of recipients is available here.

For more information, click the link that follows to contact Brown CS Communications Manager Jesse C. Polhemus.