Francine Berman
Stuart Rice Honorary Chair and Research Professor, Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences | University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA, UNITED STATES
Francine Berman is a data scientist whose work focuses on the social and environmental impacts of information technology.
Expertise (7)
Gender and whistleblowing
Social impacts of Technology
Internet of Things
Data Stewardship and Cyberinfrastructure
Public Interest Technology
Whistle-blowers
Whistleblowing
Biography
Francine Berman is a highly-recognized data scientist whose work focuses on the social and environmental impacts of information technology, and in particular of the Internet of Things – a deeply interconnected ecosystem of billions of devices and systems that are transforming commerce, science and society.
Berman's recent research exploring the role of whistleblowers in the technology industry, and examining why so many prominent whistleblowers are women has been reported widely.
In 2015, Berman was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become a member of the National Council on the Humanities. In 2019, she was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2020, Berman was elected to be a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
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Education (3)
University of Washington: Ph.D., Computer Science
University of Washington: M.A., Computer Science
UCLA: B.A., Mathematics
Links (3)
Select Recent Media Coverage (4)
Podcast: Future Shock: Grappling With the Generative AI Revolution
Harvard Data Science Review online
2024-05-31
Francine Berman, Director of Public Interest Technology and the Stuart Rice Research Professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences discusses what generative AI can and cannot do.
Roundtable Panel
WAMC radio
2024-01-11
Francine Berman, discusses the possibility of another government shutdown and Mike Johnson’s role in trying to rein in the GOP. “What this reminds me of is … [when] you read these baby books that say, ‘how do you handle kids with tantrums?’ which is very much what [Mike Johnson] has to do. And the baby book that I read said, don’t let the tantrum determine what you’re going to do. [His] job is the same thing: these guys—not all guys—are going to throw tantrums on a regular basis and he has to figure out how to get the job done. And at some point they may just end up kicking him out and then they’ll get kabuki theater again.”
A Professor Encouraged Students to Use ChatGPT. OpenAI Asked Her What She Learned
Yahoo! Life online
2023-06-28
Rather than pretend ChatGPT doesn’t exist, Dr. Francine Berman told students in her Introduction to Public Interest Technology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst this spring that they could use the artificial intelligence (AI) tool to help them write their papers, if they wanted to.
When Women Blow the Whistle
Magazine of the Society of Women Engineers online
2023-01-13
Francine Berman describes her research looking at why so many tech whistleblowers are women. “In many professions such as big tech or engineering, women tend to be a pretty small percentage. And when they are a small percentage, there’s issues in terms of inclusion, and feeling a sense of solidarity or insider status with the unit or the institution," she says.
Select Publications (1)
Why are so many big tech whistleblowers women? Here is what the research shows
The ConversationFrancine Berman and Jennifer Lundquist
2022-06-06
A number of high-profile whistleblowers in the technology industry have stepped into the spotlight in the past few years. ... Many of these whistleblowers are women – far more, it appears, than the proportion of women working in the tech industry. This raises the question of whether women are more likely to be whistleblowers in the tech field. The short answer is: “It is complicated.”
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