Administrative judge since 2015 joining the European Commission as a seconded national experts in June 2020.

Emilia Gómez (lead scientist) holds BSc and MSc degrees in Electrical Engineering and a PhD degree in Computer Science. She is a principal investigator on Human and Machine Intelligence (HUMAINT) at the Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission. She is also a guest professor at the Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Her research is grounded in the Music Information Retrieval field, where she has developed data-driven technologies to support music listening experiences. Starting from music, she studies the impact of algorithmic systems on human decision making, cognitive and socio-emotional development. Her research interests include fairness and transparency in AI, the impact of AI on jobs, and how it affects children development. She is currently a member of the OECD One AI expert group, the Spanish National Council for AI, and part of the research team at the JRC providing evidence-based scientific support to AI EU policy initiatives, notably the AI Act and the Digital Services Act.

Lizbeth Goodman (BA, MA, MLitt, PhD, FRSA) A Native New Yorker, Lizbeth Goodman is a US citizen and also a dual UK and Irish citizen. She has dedicated her career for over 35 years to the goal of innovating more accessible and inclusive online educational environments where people of all backgrounds, diversities, interests, talents, and abilities could shine. For decades she has led innovation and delivery teams in top universities, working from within academia to shift the balance of power and to broaden our understandings of the capabilities of ALL people to thrive in their chosen creative careers, whether live or online. She is is Chair of Creative Technology Innovation and Full Professor of Inclusive Design for Education at University College Dublin (Ireland), where she directs the Inclusive Design Research Centre of Ireland at UCD (IDRC) within the College of Engineering and Architecture, in collaboration with the SMARTlab Academy. She is Programme Director for the Thematic PhD in the College of E&A as UCD’s only fully interdisciplinary PhD spanning all colleges and disciplines. She has held a Personal Chair in Creative Technology Innovation since its award in London in 2005. In this programme she has co-designed solutions for large cohorts of practitioner-scholars to engage in practice-based or practice-led research degrees from wherever they are, building upon the firm foundation of her initial project leadership at the Open University and the BBC New Media Performance Group in the early 1990s, as the internet first emerged as a force in higher education. At the OUBBC, she lead the team that invented the first interactive performance CD-rom to enable ‘connected education’ for thousands of registered students and millions of ‘drop in viewers’ for her lectures on BBC 2 television, with RADA and the RSC. For UCD Engineering (MME) she is Chair of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, and professorial representative for student engagement and inclusion on the University-wide Neurodiversity and Disability Subgroups for EDI as well. She is herself legally blind but fully able to function due to assistive technology (sophisticated lenses and large screens). She brings her experience of navigating an ‘abled-world’ with the help of assistive technology tools into all her work, which seeks to create and support a more inclusive society for all. In this regard she has led on numerous large EU projects on Inclusive Learning, Customisable/Personalisable Screens and textbooks, and on Assistive Technology Standards and Hardware Standards for inclusive education. Previously, she was Director of Research for Futurelab – Lord David Puttnam’s thinktank for the future of Education in the UK- and served in that capacity on the Prime Minister’s SHINE Panel. Futurelab brought the most innovative teachers out of schools, trained them as researchers and creative technologists, and worked in close cooperation with the Parliamentary Working Groupon Education, BECTA and the linked policy making departments of UK government, as well as with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. She has served as Academic Chair of the Marie Curie ASSISTID Programme for the DOCTRID Research Institute: the first top tier research institute bridging the Republic and Northern Ireland (Mr Dermot Desmond, Chair of Board). She was named Best Woman in Technology and Best Woman in Academia and the Public Sector by Blackberry Rim Women’s Excellence Awards in 2008. She was elected to Chair the Social Sciences Panel of the Royal Irish Academy in 2012. In 2018 she was named Director of the Academy4theFuture. In 2019 she was named Woman of the Decade in Innovation for Education by WEF Women, with award ceremonies at DAVOS and at the UN in New York. In 2021 she was elected to become the global lead for STEM and STEAM Education as part of the WEF G100 Council. She is also a Governor of Ravensbourne College of London, serving to support Creative Industries outreach and artist-citizen engagement there, as well as serving on their Academic Board. She has published 14 academic books with leading publishers Routledge, Faber& Faber, Polity Press, Intellect Press, and many more, and has also published many dozens of peer-reviewed papers. She has supervised 60 PhDs to successful completion and currently directs studies for 30 PhDs and Postdoc researchers across Europe, in the fields of Creative Technology Innovation, Educational Technology Innovation, Connected Inclusive Learning, Gender and Diversity, Design for Inclusion, Connected Health, AI and Unconscious Bias, The Future of Work, Pro-social Behaviour Change using XR, et al. She has won and led numerous major research projects for the EC and industry collaborators including: PI RADICAL for the EU (based at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 2000-20002. She served as co-PI for the Learnovate Centre’s Virtual Worlds and Games interdisciplinary theme (6 million euros) and Academic Chair/UCD faculty lead for the ASSISTID Project (8.9 million euros overall to the all-island consortium led by charity Respect for the DOCTRID Institute, coordinated by and for RCSI, MSU et al._She has held awards as Principal Investigator to support 7 Irish Research Council scholars, 6 Marie Curie scholars and 10 Enterprise Ireland Research awards to support members of her team in Innovation for Real World Impact, in addition to leading a Sláintecare Integration Project on active citizen health using gamification during the Covid-19 Pandemic, and a seed project on the novel uses of context-specific virtual worlds for training in Unconscious Bias in AI (impacting on HR, Education, and Global Health in terms of gender bias, racial bias, ability bias, economic bias, cultural fit bias, et al- to help shape the social and employment opportunities of the future). She is currently the PI for Ireland and Workpackage leader on Communications, Outreach and Impact for the 25 million euro Horizon Europe/IMI project Screen4Care, creating the platform for patient engagement and virtual clinics for families living with rare diseases: the UCD team led by Goodman brings creative technologists as well as Future Foresight experts to the centre of the programme. She also holds SFI and Horizon Europe Co-PI positions on projects/grants on the future of educational innovation and sustainability (with Dr Anita McKeown) and the Bioeconomy (with Dr Tom Curran). She is currently also Chair of the All-Island-USA collaboration project with Thomas Jefferson University, Mt Sinai and the research hospital network. For seven years, Professor Goodman worked with Microsoft Research and Microsoft CSR/Unlimited Potential on their largest ever community engagement project- (Clubtech), which has so far transformed the education of over 7 million children and young people worldwide using interactive and ‘live’ media training tools; Microsoft still cites this as their most impactful programme to date. She has since led strategic partnerships and funded research and impact projects with the BBC, RTE, TG4, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Dell, Logitech et al. She is PI of the current Logitech-SMARTlab initiative to develop the first-ever Hardware Accessibility Audit. She has served as Creative Agent for Arts Council UK and as Chair of Judges for the Welcome Trust’s Science on Stage and Screen and ArtSci Programmes, for the Banff New Media Institute’s thinktanks for new media, as chair of Judges for the EU HERA (Humanities in the Digital Research Area) and Cost and FET OPEN calls. She also won the Lifetime Achievement Award for Volunteer Service to Women and Children in 2003, Times Square, NYC for her work on founding and directing the USA charity Safetynet. She is a regular judge and mentor for global hackathons, workshops and playshops including the MIT Reality Hacked summit. She serves on the XR Inclusion and XR Accessibility global councils and on the IEEE Metaverse Standards Working Group and on several other IEEE specialist panels. She also regularly delivers global keynotes and workshops on Inclusive Design, Creative Technology Innovation, Women’s Leadership and the Future of Inclusive Education. She is currently one of a small team of Lead Quality Checkers supporting Evaluators for the European Innovation Fund. She advises arts organizations, philanthropic funds, and research networks on Educational Technology Futures. She is Founder/Director of SMARTlab Academy, SMARTlab Global, SMARTlab clg, and the IDRC. She is Vice President of Special Effect: an Oxford-based charity supporting games and creative expression for young people with disabilities, and is Director of Research for An Saol, a Dublin-based charity supporting life and living for young people living with severe brain injuries through co-creation of novel musical instruments for creative expression. She lives to make university education accessible to all, and to bring creativity to the heart of ALL education and research in service of a more inclusive society. Her publications list online is found at: https://people.ucd.ie/lizbeth.goodman Also see: https://www.ucd.ie/smartlab/ https://www.idrcireland.com/ https://www.smartlabniagara.com/