Siegel Family Endowment is proud to announce the 2024-2025 cohort of Siegel Research Fellows. This extraordinary group includes researchers, academics, and policy experts whose work spans diverse fields such as technology ethics, economic democracy, social media dynamics, and AI governance.
As we reflect on the past year, it’s clear that artificial intelligence has dominated discussions across various domains. What surprises us, however, is not the volume of conversation but rather its lack of nuance. Having navigated many cycles of technological development, we recognize the urgent need to move beyond the simplistic “gloom vs. doom” narrative. Instead, we must critically examine what these technologies can do, what they cannot, and—most importantly—what we truly need from them.
Our latest grants reaffirm our commitment to building a more inclusive technological future by supporting comprehensive research, shaping human-centered policies, and fostering community-driven innovation to ensure these advancements benefit everyone.
Eleanor Tursman, a Siegel Fellow from 2022 to 2024, serves as an Emerging Technologies Researcher at The Aspen Institute, focusing on the intersection of novel technologies, public education, and public policy. They recently sat down with Siegel Emerging Tech Advisor Eryk Salvaggio to discuss their journey and work on AI primers, literacy, and interdisciplinary approaches to ecosystem change
Siegel Family Endowment and the Walton Family Foundation are thrilled to announce five Phase 2 winners that will receive $200,000 each and advance to the Phase 3 incubator in the Learning Landscapes Challenge. These winners emerged from an exceptional cohort of 40 Phase 2 accelerator teams with transformative visions for K-12 educational infrastructure.
Read new Siegel In-House Research Fellow Symon Campbell’s latest publication in Journal of Integrated Global STEM analyzing three K-12 Black-oriented EdTech platforms developed by Black women—KaiXR, Reconstruction, and TunTimo—leverage public interest technology principles to address educational inequities and counter racial biases in mainstream EdTech.
How can we build a resilient public interest technology movement that withstands shifts in administration and power? Siegel President & Executive Director Katy Knight lays out her vision for change in her latest article as a Forbes Nonprofit Council member.
Data Futures Lab, a project of the Mozilla Foundation, served as an experimental space for developing new approaches to data stewardship. Its goal was to build tools and communities designed to offer such better ways—ways that give greater control and agency to people. In so doing, the project sought to advance policies, approaches, and tools that prioritize data co-creation, ownership, and stewardship in ways that benefit a diverse and inclusive public. Read more in our capstone case study.
During this year’s United Nations High-Level Week, we hosted Tech Together – a gathering of 200+ funders, mission-aligned investors, and thought leaders for a full-day event aimed at inspiring new ideas and catalyzing partnerships to shape the next evolution of a global public interest tech network. Watch featured panels and speakers, and read out takeaways.
Yvonne Eadon is an assistant professor in the School of Information Science at the University of Kentucky investigating feminized conspiracy theories and the gender dynamics within online communities that form around them, as well as how information institutions interface with and assist researchers with alternative or conspiratorial viewpoints.
AI tools can be used to generate content, but only humans can generate context. In an age full of systems designed for scale and demanding the rapid processing of data, local institutions can help preserve meaningful context for their communities.
