AI4PEP Board of Trustees

Barrister Jake Okechukwu Effoduh: is an International lawyer with expertise in human rights and technology law. He is the Chief Councillor for the Africa-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC). Effoduh is also a Research Fellow at the Center for Human Rights Science at Carnegie Mellon University, USA and a Vanier Scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School, Canada, conducting doctorate research on the legitimization of artificial intelligence in Africa. Effoduh holds two masters degrees in international law from the University of Oxford (UK), and York University (Canada) respectively. He has worked across various supranational legal systems including West Africa’s Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the African human rights system, and the UN Human Rights Council. He has gained legal and programmatic experiences from working in over 22 African countries and other countries outside the region. Effoduh was selected by the U.S. Department of State and the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center into the global AI Connect program and he also serves as the youngest member of the Global Future Council on Frontier Risks, a brain trust of the World Economic Forum. He has published several works on legal and human rights issues on the development and use of AI and he is currently advising two countries on how best to build policies and legislations on the use, development and deployment of AI.

Prof. Mary Goitom (SWC): is an Associate Professor at the School of Social Work and Graduate Program Director of the Development Studies Program in the Department of Social Science at York University. Her research explores migration, mobilities, diasporic connections, transnational processes, and social relations. Her work is centered on community-based research and is grounded in Ethiopian epistemologies and larger African traditional knowledge systems. Prof. Goitom’s work explores the nexus of identity and futurity (imagined world-building), transnational social fields in relation to the constitution of settlement, citizenship, well-being, agency, and resilience.

Prof. Ali Asgary: is the Executive Director of York University’s Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid-response Simulation (ADERSIM) and the Director of CIFAL York (created by UNITAR, YorkUniversity and York Region for leaders, executives, and civil society training). He brings world-leading expertise in disaster risk assessment and modelling, agent-based simulation, integrated AI and Spatio-temporal analysis, and urban and industrial risks at national and international levels.

Prof. Sylvia Bawa (TP): is a global sociologist whose research examines how historical inequities in the global system interact with local patriarchal cultures to oppress women. She has received various prestigious funding awards in recognition of her innovative and collaborative work. Dr. Bawa is the principal investigator (PI) for an interdisciplinary SSHRC Partnership Grant (PDG) – Research/Dissemination Network on Canada’s Human Rights Role in Sub-Saharan Africa (CARRISSA) –which examines the nature, attainments and challenges of Canada/Africa transnational human rights engagements. It brings together over 30 academics (in different fields), legal practitioners, activists and civil society actors from six (6) countries and focuses on four thematic areas (Gender/Sexuality/Women’s rights, Democratization, Economic/Social Rights and Investment and Human Rights). She is also co-investigator on another SHRC PDG and Insight Grant. Her experience with leading, participating in and managing large SSHRC PDGs on transitional human rights and international development projects will be useful in administering a grant of this size as the PI. Currently the director of the Resource Centre for Public Sociology at York, Dr. Bawa has held numerous Community Conversations with Black Community groups throughout Toronto under LA&PS Global Community Conversations project on various social justice topics. She will co-lead the community engagement components of the projects.

Dr. Nicola Luigi Bragazzi (Assistant Director of GEID and Chief Scientist): was born on March 2, 1986, in Carrara (MS, Tuscany), Italy. He got his Medical Degree (MD) in general medicine and surgery from Genoa University (Genoa, Italy) in 2011, his doctorate (PhD) in biophysics from Philipps University of Marburg (Marburg, Germany) in 2014, and his specialization in Public Health from Genoa University (Genoa, Italy) in 2017. He is a member of the Cochrane Association (Cochrane Reviewer) for the Cochrane Epilepsy Group. He is also a member of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Initiative (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, IHME, University of Washington, USA), which aims at quantitatively measuring the burden of disease generated by 369 diseases and injuries and 87 risk factors from 1990 onwards in 204 countries and territories. He has been awarded the “Young Knight of the Italian Republic” (“Alfiere della Repubblica Italiana”) by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in 2005. Recently, in 2019, he has been nominated as one of the top five biomedical researchers worldwide aged less than 40 years in terms of the number of publications, articles in Q1 biomedical journals, total impact factor, and h-index (USERN Prize). He also received other prizes, including the Guidoniani Prize in 2018, for his contributions to evidence-based medicine, the MAI Prize 2020 for his contributions toward a better understanding of the epidemiological basis of autoimmunity and autoinflammation, and the 2020 HSE Open Access Research Award for his contributions to evidence-based medicine and the fight against COVID-19. According to a scholarly study by Professor Ioannidis, Stanford University, USA, he has highly contributed to COVID-19 research, being among the most productive researchers from across the world and the only one from Canada in the list of highly cited and prolific researchers on COVID-19. According to a list of researchers compiled by Professor Ioannidis, he belongs to the 2% of top scientists worldwide. The list can be accessed here: https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/btchxktzyw/1. He is working on advanced mathematical modeling (infectious disease and vaccination modeling) and big data mining and artificial intelligence in biomedicine at York University, Toronto, ON, Canada. He is passionate about equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), and he is utilizing big data and artificial intelligence to empower underserved, marginalized communities (the 2SLGBTQIAP+ community, of which he is an out-and-proud member, people with disabilities, and in particular disabled athletes and para-athletes, visible racialized communities, and Aboriginals).
Specifically concerning digital health, informatics, analytics, and machine learning, he has been a pioneer in the field of “infodemiology and infoveillance” and in the use of the so-called nonconventional or novel data streams, such as the number of accesses to Wikipedia pages, and web searches/web queries. He has published his research in the prestigious “Journal of Medical Internet Research” (JMIR), the number one and leading journal in the field of digital health. He has also published in other relevant journals, like “Health Informatics Journal”, “JMIR mHealth and uHealth”, “JMIR Formative Research”, “JMIR Public Health and Surveillance”, and “JMIR Mental Health”, among others.
Of note, he has been deploying artificial intelligence for exploring topics of great relevance in the field of social justice, and EDI. Finally, he has been working with Statistics Canada, analyzing data relevant to the Canadian healthcare system and informing local policies.

Dr. Zahra Movahedi Nia is a research associate at York University and a data scientist at AI4PEP Global south, specializing in machine learning, data analytics, and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Holding a Ph.D in computer engineering, Zahra has spent three years as a postdoctoral researcher at York University, where they have developed a novel early warning system for respiratory infections through web-based data sources. Zahra’s primary research program is centered on the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data science to enhance decision-making processes in clinical public health. Through the development of advanced machine learning models and data mining methods, she aims to address complex health challenges by providing data-driven insights and predictive tools that inform healthcare policies and interventions. Outside of academia, Zahra is invested in the development of Large Language Models (LLMs) with the potential to offer anonymous medical consultation support to individuals, broadening access to reliable health information while maintaining privacy. She is deeply devoted to bridging the gap between cutting-edge AI technologies and practical healthcare solutions, aiming to create tools that empower both individuals and healthcare providers.