Lorenn Ruster is a final-year PhD Candidate at the Australian National University’s School of Cybernetics and recipient of the Florence Mackenzie Scholarship in a New Branch of Engineering. For 10 years, Lorenn was a strategy consultant, most recently a Director focused on Systems Change at PwC’s Indigenous Consulting (now Yamagigu Consulting). She’s also a responsible technology collaborator with the Centre for Public Impact, an Acumen Global Fellow where she spent a year working with a Ugandan Solar Energy company as their Marketing and Innovation Director and an alumnus of Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program where she prototyped high tech hardware leveraging sensor technology for community-led landmine detection

Her research explores and prototypes what proactive responsibility practices can look like for organisations committed to the responsible development of artificial intelligence (AI). Part of her research includes the creation and testing of her own framework focused on dignity-centred AI development. This framework has been used to audit the development of an automated classification system and, following this, is now being trialled as ‘business as usual’ practice for a data science team who creates algorithms. 

She undertakes participatory, engaged, qualitative research with early-stage startups and other entrepreneurial organisations building AI-enabled products. Her research interests span humanistic approaches to AI development, responsible AI practices, visual and reflective practices for organizational understanding, cultures of innovation (particularly in startup contexts) and cybernetic and system-oriented tools and methods. 

An interdisciplinary scholar, to date her work has been presented at conferences such as the European Group of Organization Studies (EGOS), the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), the Australasian Conference for Information Systems (ACIS) and the Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (OzCHI). Her work has also featured in mainstream podcasts and books such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Science Show and Man-Made: How the Bias of the Past is being in-built in the future by renowned Australian journalist, Tracey Spicer.

She holds a Master of Applied Cybernetics from the Australian National University, a Master of International Management (CEMS MIM) from the University of Sydney, HEC Paris and Copenhagen Business School specialising in Social Innovation, and a Bachelor of Science/Arts. She is also a Non-Executive Director of the Accountable Futures Collective – an organisation committed to redefining and driving accountability to young people and the next generation.

Email: Lorenn.Ruster@anu.edu.au