British data journalist Will Grimond is among the ten journalists chosen for the second round of the European Research Council’s (ERC) initiative
A list of the journalists selected for the second round of the FRONTIERS Science Journalism in Residency Programme was announced today, December 10. This prestigious program provides science journalists with the opportunity to spend three to five months in residency at top European research institutions, collaborating with researchers on innovative journalistic projects. Grimond will be based at the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) in Vienna, where he will investigate the concept of fairness in artificial intelligence (AI).
“CSH’s computational, statistical approach to studying algorithmic fairness presents me with a unique opportunity as a data journalist,” says Grimond, Special Projects Lead at RADAR, a start-up under PA Media, the UK’s largest news agency.
“The study of algorithmic fairness is not a new discipline, but it has often been approached from the perspective of singular disciplines: such as philosophy, anthropology or mathematics. The Complexity Science Hub is attempting to marry various approaches to deal with the question of what constitutes ‘fair’ in the context of automated decision-making, and for the first time quantify how bias perpetuates itself among networks along various social characteristics,” adds Grimond.
Grimond will collaborate with Fariba Karimi’s research group on the topic of Algorithmic Fairness, a project that seeks to address one of the most pressing challenges in AI today.
The other FRONTIERS fellows—Marta Abbà, Rina Caballar, Danielle Fleming, Giorgia Guglielmi, Suvi Jaakkola, Tim Kalvelage, Thomas Reintjes, Senne Starckx, and Meera Subramanian—will be hosted at institutions in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The second call for the FRONTIERS program, which closed in September 2024, received 47 applications.
About Will Grimond
Will Grimond is a data journalist at RADAR, a PA Media unit that syndicates data stories. He writes about a range of issues including health, welfare, the environment and social affairs. Grimond previously worked at the think tank RSA (The Royal Society for Arts) as a media officer and data researcher. While at the RSA, he covered topics such as artificial intelligence, the future of work, climate change, among other topics.
About FRONTIERS
FRONTIERS is the science journalism initiative the European Research Council (ERC) funded in 2023. The project allows science journalists to cover frontier science topics within research institutions in the European Union or an associated country with the EU’s Horizon Europe, ensuring journalistic independence. FRONTIERS aims to tackle some of the challenges of science
journalism, including the deteriorating employment conditions and resources available for science journalists.
