Janet Vertesi

Vertesi is a sociologist of science and technology at Princeton University, and an expert in the sociology of technology, science, and organizations. She has spent over a decade embedded in robotic spacecraft teams at NASA, observing teams of scientists working on other planets such as the Mars Exploration Rover mission and the Cassini Mission to Saturn. In addition, Vertesi writes frequently about data practices and personal information privacy. Known for her “opt out” experiments, she takes conscientious objection to new levels by building her own digital systems and avoiding data capture both online and offline. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Yahoo! and Microsoft Research, and NASA; she is an advisory board member at the Data & Society Think/Do Tank in New York City and faculty fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University.