Darren Edge
Director
About
Darren Edge (opens in new tab) is Director of Human Rights Technology (opens in new tab) in Microsoft Research Special Projects (opens in new tab), where he builds technologies and partnerships to tackle some of the most challenging problems affecting people and society. He represents Microsoft in the Tech Against Trafficking (TAT) (opens in new tab) coalition working to combat human trafficking with technology, and represents Microsoft Research in the Microsoft ACTS (opens in new tab) program aiming to accelerate government transparency in the fight against corruption.
Darren’s research focus is creating interactive software that empowers domain experts who are not data scientists to view, explore, and make sense of data in ways that inform evidence-based action. Using an activity-based design approach, he takes technologies with the potential to transform real-world data work (including methods from generative AI, graph statistics, differential privacy, and causal inference) and makes them available for real-world use.
- For an overview of human rights technology to combat human trafficking, see this Microsoft Research blog (opens in new tab) (also covered in TechCrunch (opens in new tab) and TechRepublic (opens in new tab)).
- For an overview of human rights technology to combat corruption, see this case study (opens in new tab).
- For the latest open-source software releases, see Synthetic Data Showcase (opens in new tab) (an interactive application for private data sharing), ShowWhy (opens in new tab) (an interactive application for guided causal inference), and Transparency Engine (opens in new tab) (a data pipeline for detecting and communicating relationship-mediated risk).
Previously, Darren’s research has aimed to transform a wide range of human activities, including achieving Societal Resilience (opens in new tab), making sense of media and organizations, combating cybercrime and misinformation, preparing for presentations and second language conversations, combining exercise, play, and social interaction through exertion games, and managing work tasks through peripheral, tangible, and embodied forms of interaction. He has published broadly in these areas and contributed to a variety of Microsoft products.
Darren holds a BA and PhD from the University of Cambridge. He returned to Cambridge in 2016 following eight years as an HCI researcher at Microsoft Research Asia.