Sarah Fox
Assistant Professor | Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA, UNITED STATES
Sarah Fox's research examines how technological artifacts challenge or propagate social exclusions.
Biography
Sarah Fox is an Assistant Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where she directs the Tech Solidarity Lab. Her research examines how technological artifacts challenge or propagate social exclusions. She holds a Ph.D. in Human Centered Design & Engineering from the University of Washington.
Areas of Expertise (5)
Human Centered Design
Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics (FATE)
Design Research
Future of Work
Social Exclusions
Media Appearances (3)
Carnegie Mellon Community Shines at SXSW 2025 — an Intersection of Culture, Tech and Innovation
CMU News online
2025-03-21
At another session, Sarah Fox and Nikolas Martelaro presented their collaboration with transit operators and their unions aimed at understanding the impacts of future technologies on transportation workers. The two explained the potential to leverage AI in "Creating Safer, More Equitable Public Transit Systems." Fox explained that the role of bus operators often goes beyond driving. They are often responsible for balancing the environment of the vehicle and the wellness of passengers. “Bus operators regularly described unexpected circumstances, both in navigating the road and managing the social environment of the bus. These circumstances often require split-second decision making and nuanced social judgments,” she said.
Sidewalk robots could shovel snow or act as crossing guards
Futurity online
2024-06-06
In their research, Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science faculty members Sarah Fox and Nikolas Martelaro highlight potential issues sidewalk robots encounter during deployment and propose solutions to mitigate them before the robots hit the streets.
A (hypothetical, incremental) revolution in automated transit
Politico online
2024-05-01
I called up Sarah Fox and Nikolas Martelaro, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and authors of a 2022 policy paper on automated public transit, to ask them exactly how close, or far, we might be from that “win.” As it turns out, it’s a little bit more complicated than simply taking the driver out of every bus. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows:
Media
Publications:
Documents:
Photos:
Videos:
Audio/Podcasts:
Accomplishments (5)
DIS Best Paper Honorable Mention Award (professional)
2021
Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviewing, ACM CSCW (professional)
2021
DIS Best Paper Honorable Mention Award (professional)
2020
CHI Best Paper Award (professional)
2019
Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviewing, ACM DIS (professional)
2019
Education (3)
University of Washington: Ph.D., Human Centered Design & Engineering 2018
Georgia Institute of Technology: M.S. 2013
The University of Georgia: Bachelor's Degree 2009
Links (3)
Event Appearances (1)
Career Mentoring Workshop
February 2022 | Computing Research Association Washington, DC
Research Grants (3)
“Regulating automation to ensure worker health and safety in the hospitality sector”
Block Center for Technology and Society $30,000
2022-23
“Developing Community-Led & Equity-Focused Public Interest Technology Curriculum”
Public Interest Technology University Network, $89,457
2022-23
“Upskilling hospitality workers and re-designing workplaces for the future of automation”
NSF Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier $1,535,074
2021-25
Articles (3)
‘Hey ChatGPT, Finish This Building…’: A Worker‐Led AI Agenda for the Construction Industry
Architectural Design2024 Instead of AI systems being foisted on workplaces and workers from the top down via a one‐size‐fits all approach, Sarah Fox, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Tech Solidarity Lab, investigates how more participative practices might enable staff to develop equitable workload procedures in conjunction with machine learning systems. How can businesses transform to incorporate AI without the nuances of mass redundancies and human supplication to such processes?
Hormonal advantage: retracing exploitative histories of workplace menstrual tracking
Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience2021 Technologies and self-help protocols associated with menstrual tracking have gained popularity over the past decade, with wellness consultants such as Alisa Vitti at the helm. Through careful monitoring and lifestyle changes, such techniques promise to unleash an inherent hormonal advantage that can extend one’s personal and professional pursuits. Though seemingly new, these approaches to menstrual monitoring have an historical lineage born of corporate management. Now being sold as feminist, they draw on a belief in menstrual deficit, or an understanding of menstruation along productivist lines focused on curbing workplace absenteeism and enhancing personal optimization. In bringing together cases from over the last century, this paper seeks to establish a through line of economization and imagine instead how workplace tracking might be leveraged toward worker mobilization and bargaining for collective gains.
The ‘working body’: interrogating and reimagining the productivist impulses of transhumanism through crip-centered speculative design
Somatechnics2020 Appeals to ‘nature’ have historically led to normative claims about who is rendered valuable. These understandings elevate a universal, working body (read able-bodied, white, producing capital) that design and disability studies scholar Aimi Hamraie argues ‘has served as a template […] for centuries’ (2017: 20), becoming reified through our architectural, political, and technological infrastructures. Using the framing of the cyborg, we explore how contemporary assistive technologies have the potential to both reproduce and trouble such normative claims. The modern transhumanism movement imagines cyborg bodies as self-contained and invincible, championing assistive technologies that seek to assimilate disabled people towards ever-increasing standards of independent productivity and connecting worth with the body's capacity for labor.
Social