S. Craig Watkins is the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor and the Executive Director of the IC² Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the technical, social, and ethical implications of artificial intelligence. His research explores the challenges of deploying AI in the context of high stakes contexts like health care. For example, he was part of a multidisciplinary team of social scientists, psychologists, and computer scientists who prototyped a chatbot to support parents dealing with postpartum depression. Watkins is part of an NIH-funded project that is exploring the design of ethical AI to address the crisis of rising rates of suicide among youth, especially Black youth. His team is also probing an NIH dataset to understand how social determinants of health influence health outcomes and health disparities. Through his leadership at the IC2 Institute, Watkins is collaborating with the Dell Medical School and UT faculty to enhance the use of artificial intelligence to address health disparities.

Craig is an internationally recognized expert in media and technology systems and the author of six books and numerous articles and book chapters. His research explores, among other things, how technological innovation built the hip-hop economy (Hip Hop Matters), the social and behavioral implications of young people’s engagement with computer-mediated technologies (The Young and the Digital), the shifting contours of the digital divide (The Digital Edge), and the creative ways young people adopt technology to navigate a precarious society and economy (Don’t Knock the Hustle). This work illuminates the nuanced ways in which structural inequalities influence the design, deployment, and adoption of computer-mediated systems leading to both systemic challenges and opportunities to enhance the human experience.

Watkins’ work has been profiled in places as varied as the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Newsweek, TIME, ESPN, and NPR, and featured at venues like SXSW, The Aspen Institute, The Boston Federal Reserve, New York Hall of Science, MIT’s Media Lab, The New York Times Dialogue on Race, and the Brene Brown podcast, Unlocking Us.