Antwi Akom is a senior nonresident fellow with the Center for Community Uplift. His research focuses on the intersection between AI, race, technology, data, design, and health innovation, and falls into three thematic areas:
- Real-time data, democratizing data, community-powered data, and asset-based community design.
- Data modernization, data transformation, social and structural determinants of health (SDOH).
- AI, algorithmic justice, AI policy, big data, and climate justice.
As a globally recognized thought-leader in co-designing local data ecosystems to improve community health; connecting data across local communities, government, and health sectors; and democratizing data and design to lift the voices, values, priorities, and needs of communities from the margins to the epicenter, Dr. Akom’s research and scholarship includes: 1) utilizing real-time community-driven, community-powered data to modernize and transform our public health data ecosystems; 2) accelerating the development of local knowledge ecosystems that center principles of data and design justice; 3) advancing the building and ownership of AI solutions tailored to local contexts as a pathway to ensure equitable community development; and 4) developing community-based AI systems dynamics throughout the United States, Europe, and the Global South, including Africa, India, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America, in order to prevent AI harm, stop the weaponization of biometric AI, and develop more inclusive, ethical, equitable, nondiscriminatory, and democratized AI models and metrics for all (Hovmand, 2014; Martin, 2021).
Currently, Dr. Akom is a distinguished professor and founding director of the University of California, San Francisco and San Francisco State University’s Social Innovation and Universal Opportunity Lab (SOUL Lab), where his work explores how communities can co-design with cities, hospitals, and health care providers to build power and self-determination, reduce disparities, create healthier neighborhoods, increase health and climate equity, and use the power of real-time data, community- and patient-driven data, big data, and predictive analytics to create local knowledge ecosystems that improve asset-based community development and the social and structural determinants of health.
Committed to transforming the relationship between AI, data, design, power, and innovation, Dr. Akom is also the founder and CEO of DOPE Labs, which stands for Digital Organizing Power Building and Engagement Labs, as well as an award-winning mobile, mapping, and SMS community-driven data platform called Streetwyze. DOPE Labs and Streetwyze are two of the leading community-based organizations and platforms in the world that work with communities to examine opportunities and threats to open societies, explore how local context matters when designing AI and other emerging technologies, identify socio-technical harms before they get to machine learning, and reimagine data transformation by building culturally and community-responsive technologies and methodologies that democratize data and inspire scalable, community-driven design solutions.
As a transdisciplinary professor of community informatics, public interest technology, AI, public health, data science, design innovation, and African American studies, Dr. Akom writes, teaches, and speaks widely about democratizing data, community-centric design, algorithmic justice, equitable AI, ethical AI, AI policy, AI governance, social determinants of health, and working with frontline communities to generate real-time, community-powered solutions to address vital social conditions, health and well-being indicators, and community needs.
As a thought-leader and motivational speaker, Dr. Akom’s work on developing tech for social good, democratizing data, extending life expectancy and longevity, and data and design justice for all has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, featured at the White House Frontiers conference and the White House Opportunity Project, published in top-tier research journals, and featured in award-winning publications such as The Nation, CityLab, Wired, and The Root. Dr. Akom has also appeared on the PBS NewsHour, NPR, Breakfast TVNZ (New Zealand), and NBC. He has shared research on democratizing data and design with leading industry research labs, including Google, YouTube, Fitbit, Meta, Nickelodeon, Paramount, and Uber, as well as with leading grassroots and community-based organizations such as the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors (NACDD), We in the World, Roots Community Health, and the Unity Council. Dr. Akom is a recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Pioneer Award, and his TEDx talk is called “Innovation Out of Poverty.” Dr. Akom received his BA in political science and economics from University of California, Berkeley; an MA from Stanford University; and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.