Dive into the vision
of today's leaders 

Arathi Sethumadhavan is a research leader, editor, storyteller and speaker.

As Head of Research for Ethics & Society at Microsoft, she works at the intersection of research, ethics, and product innovation.

 

Part engineer, part psychologist, Arathi has brought in the perspectives of more than 13,000 people, including traditionally disempowered communities, to help shape ethical development of AI and other emerging technologies.

 

She was a recent Fellow at the World Economic Forum where she surfaced opportunities for AI to help address the needs of a globally aging population.

 

Prior to joining Microsoft, Arathi worked on creating human-machine systems that helped people be effective in complex environments in aviation and healthcare.

 

During her tenure at Medtronic, she worked on several life changing and lifesaving technologies--work that received the Star of Excellence Award for innovation--and today she holds patents.

 

She has also advised pharmaceutical and medical device companies on their human factors and regulatory strategy, and her collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration culminated in several areas of empirical research including workload, situation awareness, and performance in air traffic control.

 

She has authored more than 60 articles, edited a book on health, delivered more than 80 talks at national and international venues, and taken on Adjunct Faculty roles. She has been cited by the Economist and the American Psychological Association and was included in LightHouse3’s 2022 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics list.

 

Arathi has a PhD in Experimental Psychology with a specialization in Human Factors from Texas Tech University and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science.

 

She is currently editing a book on Collaborative Intelligence.