Íris Damião, a PhD student at SPAC, has been awarded a Fulbright Research Grant to carry out her research at the University of Vermont. Her work explores algorithmic biases, focusing on search engines and large language models, and examines how these technologies shape the contemporary information ecosystem. She is particularly interested in whether, and in what ways, these systems present biased or personalized information, and how this can reinforce users’ beliefs and perspectives on controversial or sensitive topics such as elections or international conflicts.
As a visiting student at the Vermont Complex Systems Center at the University of Vermont, Íris will join the Computational Ethics Lab to expand her expertise in network science, computational ethics, and algorithm auditing. She will investigate how the structure of the internet, specifically the network of interlinked websites, varies across users and influences the information they encounter after their first click.
This Fulbright opportunity will allow Íris to collaborate with international researchers and further develop her project, contributing to the advancement of knowledge in artificial intelligence and information analysis.
Congratulations, Íris!