Joining the Info Sci faculty in July 2017, Barocas focuses on the ethics of machine learning, particularly applications that affect people’s life chances and their everyday experiences on online platforms. He is currently exploring issues of fairness in machine learning, methods for bringing accountability to automated decision-making, the privacy implications of inference, and the role that privacy plays in mitigating economic inequality.

Before arriving to Cornell, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research, where he was part of the Society, Ethics, and AI group. Previously, he spent two years at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Barocas completed his doctorate in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, where he remains a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Urban Science + Progress and an affiliate of the Information Law Institute. He also routinely works with the Data & Society Research Institute, where he's an affiliate as well.