Dr. Danks is Professor of Data Science & Philosophy at University of California, San Diego. He is also affiliate faculty in UCSD’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering.

Previously, he was the L.L. Thurstone Professor of Philosophy & Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. While at CMU, he served as the Chief Ethicist of CMU’s Block Center for Technology & Society and co-director of CMU’s Center for Informed Democracy and Social Cybersecurity (IDeaS).

He has received a James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award (2008) and an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship (2017).

Dr. Danks' research interests are at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, and machine learning, using ideas, methods, and frameworks from each to advance our understanding of complex, interdisciplinary problems. He has explored the ethical, psychological, and policy issues around AI and robotics in transportation, healthcare, privacy, and security. Dr. Danks has done significant research in computational cognitive science. And he has developed multiple novel causal discovery algorithms for complex types of observational and experimental data.