IAPP Europe Data Protection Congress 2023

Juliana Castro Varon is a designer, creative director, and the Founder of Cita Press, an award-winning open-access library and publishing studio. Juliana researches the impact artificial intelligence has on creativity and visual culture, and has worked for museums, universities, non-profits, and agencies. Her work includes product, research, digital and print, and her interests range from the literary line between fact and fiction, to open-source libraries and 17-to-19th century literature, to weird AI memes. She’s recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and a Public Knowledge Grant from the Mellon Foundation. Juliana is the author of the essay collection Papel Sensible, published in Spanish by Planeta.

Rachele is a fashion and textile designer who graduated from Politecnico di Milano with a passion for bringing together ethics and technology to generate eco-innovation. While studying in Milan, New York and Tel Aviv, she developed and patented a textile to shield wearers from face recognition technology.

This research continues to grow thanks to her startup, Cap_able, and her work as a Ph.D. student in the Knit Lab research group of the Design Department at Politecnico di Milano and the Tangible Media Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.

Her doctoral research is focused on designing innovative products from a technological and ethical point of view by investigating problems of our present that will shape our future. The project aims to protect facial biometric data in addition to creating awareness of the improper use of face recognition technology, a problem that, if neglected, could threaten individual rights.

Didero’s ultimate goal is to bring these designs to citizens. Didero hopes to scale up the production of these textiles through Cap_able, which takes its name from engineering, textile, and fashion Collaboration, to raise Awareness, designed for People. Inspired by the Italian designer Bruno Munari, she always seeks to preserve the curiosity to learn, the pleasure to understand and the desire to communicate.

Kevin Guyan is a writer and researcher whose work explores the intersection of data and identity. He is the author of “Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action,” which examines the collection, analysis and use of data associated with gender, sex and sexuality, particularly as it relates to LGBTQ+ people in the U.K. Guyan is a research fellow at the University of Glasgow, a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland and sits on the board of the LGBTQ+ human rights charity Equality Network.

Léa Steinacker is a journalist, entrepreneur and social scientist with a Ph.D. in the social dimensions of artificial intelligence systems. Her work focuses on how technology interacts with people, practices and the planet.

She has published on topics such as automated facial recognition, synthetic voice generation, quantum computing and an original framework of “Code Capital.” With her expertise in emerging technologies and their wide-ranging effects, she is a lecturer at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, teaching courses such as “Social and Economic Impacts of Artificial Intelligence.”

In 2018, Steinacker co-founded and became the chief innovation officer of ada Learning, a learning and development community that prepares leaders from diverse operations for the future through content, live experiences and practical innovation projects. Since its inception, ada has connected and worked with thousands of fellows from DAX companies, subject matter experts, governments and non-governmental organizations.

Previously, Steinacker served as the chief innovation officer of WirtschaftsWoche, Germany's leading business magazine, where she covered the future of work and socio-technological change. Prior to joining Handelsblatt Media Group, she worked with social justice NGOs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was selected as a Forbes “30 Under 30” leader, one of Medium Magazine’s “Top 30 Under 30” journalists, a BCG “Thought Leader” and an Atlantik Brücke “Young Leader”. In 2011, she was awarded the Henry Richardson Labouisse Prize for independent research.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, a master’s in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a Ph.D. from the University of St. Gallen.