Current Winner - 2023

The widespread impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have spurred calls for governance to ensure that AI applications are safe, dependable, fair, accountable, and transparent, and that they respect privacy. Despite some initial efforts towards regulation of AI applications, there is a lack of quality assurance techniques and efficient tools to ensure that applications comply with proposed regulations. For instance, there are countless reports of unfair behavior of ML-powered systems, such as facial-recognition technologies that disproportionately misclassify some races and genders compared to others.

Professor Foutse Khomh is a highly respected expert in the international software engineering community whose research efforts are improving the dependability and trustworthiness of software systems globally. Khomh’s research group is developing techniques and tools to ensure the reliability, fairness, and ethical alignment of ML-powered systems throughout their entire lifecycle, specifically addressing concepts of equity, fairness, diversity, identity, and social inclusion, to enhance user confidence.

Khomh’s research advances the development and implementation of trustworthy AI applications, especially those powered by ML, so they can provide the maximum benefit as they integrate into sectors such as healthcare, transportation, security, and customer service. He is also the driving force behind the Software Engineering for Machine Learning Applications (SEMLA) international symposium, where the world’s leading researchers and practitioners in software engineering and ML discuss the future challenges and implications of engineering complex data-intensive software systems.

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