We invite you to attend the Ethical Tech for a Global Future (ETGF) Symposium, to be held at the University of Waterloo’s Davis Centre on Thursday, October 2, 2025. If you are interested in exploring the ethical dimensions of tech development, issues surrounding responsible innovation, or the implications of emerging technology for social justice, please join us!
Event Overview
The University of Waterloo is a community of innovators and has been recognized as the most innovative University in Canada. Our institution takes pride and responsibility in its status as a global leader in cultivating technology-oriented innovation. The university has explicitly committed to “addressing the world’s most pressing challenges,” and many of those challenges are rooted in technological change and disruption.
The ETGF symposium invites the University of Waterloo community, along with stakeholders in the surrounding regions, to come together and discuss how to “ensure a safe and human-centered digital future.” During the symposium, participants will have the opportunity to:
- Learn from renowned scholars and professionals working in diverse fields who embed values related to ethics, justice, and responsibility in their approach to technological innovation;
- Interact with current UWaterloo students as they share their own ideas about how values- and justice-oriented technological innovation can make meaningful impact on society;
- Contribute to a collaborative network of creative, critical, and diverse perspectives working towards equitable and just approaches to technology in current society.
Program Schedule
The ETGF Symposium will include student presentations and posters, opportunities for networking and creative engagement, as well as a lunch-time keynote presentation and discussion panel (food provided for attendees).
Registration, Refreshments, Networking, Welcome
9:00 – 10:00 am, DC 1301
Mitigating Algorithmic Harm in AI Design
10:00 – 11:00 am, DC 1301 | Student Presentations
"Teaching for Justice: Critical Design Pedagogy in AI-Systems to Transform Design Education" (Kem-Laurin Lubin, Graduate Student, Faculty of Arts, English Language & Literature)
“Shaping AI's Soil: Mycellial Tactics for Situating and Transforming Algorithmic Systems" (Kavi Duvvoori, Graduate Student, Faculty of Arts, English Language & Literature)
"Digital Intimacies in the Face of AI Companions and Machine Learning Misogyny" (Amaya Kodituwakku, Undergraduate Student, Faculty of Arts, English Literature and Rhetoric, Co-op)
Moderator: Kayla J. Russell
Break, Networking Time, Lunch Served
11:00 – 11:30 am, DC 1301/DC 1302
Human Factors, Ethics, and the Future of Responsible Innovation
11:30 am - 1:00 pm, DC 1302 | Keynote and Panel
How can we design technologies that not only work, but also reflect our commitments to justice, care, and responsibility? Drawing from my research in human factors, health technology, and aging, this keynote explores the ways values are embedded in design processes and how responsible innovation requires centering the lived experiences of those at the margins. I will share examples from my work on technologies that support older adults, highlighting both the promises and pitfalls of current approaches. Through this lens, I invite us to imagine futures where technologies are not extractive but instead foster equity and collective well-being. The talk concludes by considering the role that students, researchers, and practitioners can play in reclaiming design for more ethical and globally responsible tech futures.
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Mauritia T. Harris (PhD)
Dr. Maurita T. Harris (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at the Wilfrid Laurier University, holding appointments in User Experience Design and Social Justice & Community Engagement. She earned her B.A. from North Carolina State University in Psychology, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Community Health from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research explores the way technology can support the well-being of people as they age from a Human Factors perspective focusing on design for aging; digital health; health and racial equity; and the technology lifecycle. As the director of the Well-Tech Research & Design Laboratory, she leads a team who collaborates with researchers to ensure the integration of interdisciplinary approaches and thinking from diverse fields (e.g., community health, design, engineering, gerontology, leisure, psychology, and social justice).
Respondents
Moderator: Fatima Sulieman (PhD)
Dr. Cosmin Munteanu (PhD)
Dr. Cosmin Munteanu (PhD) is the Schlegel Research Chair in Technology for Healthy Aging, and an Associate Professor with the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Until 2022, Cosmin was an Associate Professor at the Institute for Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology at University of Toronto Mississauga, and Director of the Technologies for Ageing Gracefully lab. He has dedicated more than two decades to research on facilitating natural, meaningful, and safe interactions between people and digital media and devices. Cosmin’s interests include designing intelligent applications that improve access to information, support learning late in life, and reduce digital marginalization, such as for older adults whose enjoyment of life and participation in society could be better supported by advances in interactive assistive technologies such as voice, conversational, or virtual reality interfaces. For this, he draws from a wide range of disciplines such as computing sciences, engineering, critical theory, and technology and society studies.
Gaya Bin Noon
Gaya Bin Noon is a PhD candidate in Public Health Sciences and the lab manager of the Ubiquitous Health Technology Lab. She also completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Waterloo, during which she was enrolled in the co-op program and worked in both the public and private sector, and originally enrolled in the MSc program before being approved to fast-track into the PhD program due to scholarly achievement. Gaya’s research interests focus on digital health policy, particularly as it pertains to the care of older adults. Her dissertation focuses on standards and guidelines for active assisted living (AAL)-enabled smart homes to help older adults to remain in their homes and maintain independence for as long as possible. She is particularly interested in the clinical applications of AAL indicators, and exploring how these can be used by care providers to provide more personalized and data-informed care in outpatient settings.
Ryan Tennant
Ryan Tennant is a Ph.D. Candidate with the Advanced Interface Design Lab in the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on advancing the design, development, and implementation of digital technologies to solve complex problems in healthcare. With a strong foundation in engineering and a passion for impactful research, he works at the intersection of human factors, artificial intelligence, and data-driven decision-making, exploring how AI uncertainty is conceptualized and communicated in safety-critical contexts. While the focus of his PhD thesis is pediatric sepsis prediction, Ryan’s research background includes home care, having studied the impact of digital tools on caregivers of older adults for his Master’s. He also recently published a study looking at the experiences of caregivers of older adults and how this informs the design of complex home care technologies. As a co-designer and co-instructor for the recently completed course, “The Wicked Problem of Accessibility," Ryan is also passionate about applying his engineering and human factors expertise to advance health-inclusion.
Break, Networking Time
12:45 – 1:00 pm, DC 1301/DC 1302
Technology Impacts on Social and Political Landscapes
1:00 – 2:00pm, DC 1301 | Student Presentations
“Evaluating Decision-Making Generalization in RAG Agent Architectures" (Jordan Leis, Madhav Malhotra, and Jennifer Yu, Undergraduate Students, Faculty of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Wat.AI)
“Agents of Change: Decoding Human Voices in Large Language Models" (Jacqueline Cardoso, Undergraduate Student, Faculty of Arts, ARBUS English Literature and Rhetoric Co-op)
[Poster] "Current Waves of Feminist Thought and Social Media as an Organizing Tool" (Zanae Kendall, Undergraduate Student, Faculty of Arts, Honours Psychology)
[Poster] "Ethical Evaluations of Emerging Technologies in the Identification and Intervention of Autism Spectrum Disorder" (Saleha Ranjha, Undergraduate Student, Faculty of Arts, Honours Psychology and English Literature and Rhetoric, Legal Studies Minor)
Moderator: Shanté Francis Paddy
Poster Conversations, Networking, Refreshments, Closing Remarks
2:00 – 3:00 pm, DC 1301
ETFG Organizing Committee
- Jacqueline Cardoso (Undergraduate Student, English Literature & Rhetoric)
- Avri Jeffcott (Undergraduate Student, Political Science and Gender, Social Justice, and Philosophy)
- Jin Sol Kim (PhD Candidate, English Language & Literature)
- Kujang Natana (Undergraduate Student, Legal Studies and Business)
- Shanté Francis Paddy (Undergraduate Student, Honours Science)
- Kayla Russell (Undergraduate Student, Communication Arts)
- Fatima Sulieman (PhD, Mechanical Engineering)
Faculty Members
- Laura Mae Lindo (Director for Black Studies; Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Gender, and Social Justice)
- Heather Love (Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature)
- Carter Neal (Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature)
- Marcel O’Gorman (University Research Chair; Professor of English Language & Literature; Founding Director of the Critical Media Lab)
- Christopher Taylor (Associate Vice-President for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Anti-Racism; Associate Professor, Department of History)
ETGF is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) in partnership with the University of Waterloo’s Black Faculty Collective/Black Studies and the Critical Media Lab (CML).
Questions?
For more information about the ETGF Symposium please contact us: ETGFquestions@gmail.com.