Sara Berger

Dr. Sara Berger is a Senior Research Scientist and manager at IBM Research. She received her BA from Macalester College, majoring in neuroscience and minoring in women/gender/and sexuality studies, and her PhD from Northwestern University, specializing in systems and cognitive neuroscience with a sub-specialty in medical humanities and bioethics. Sara has over a decade of experience in the field of pain - her previous research encompassed identifying, quantifying, and predicting changes in pain perception in both animals and humans using quantitative and qualitative methods, with an emphasis in chronic pain, placebo, and the psychology of care. At IBM, she has applied her knowledge of neuroimaging, ecological assessment, and clinical trial design to address a wide variety of questions and applications in neuroscience, including a joint research client project in the neuromodulation space. In 2021, Sara was selected to MIT Tech Review's 35 Innovators under 35 as a Visionary for her work in the pain space.

As part of IBM’s Responsible and Inclusive Technology Research team, Sara is now leveraging her multidisciplinary interests and background in designing multimodal frameworks, tools, and methods that aid researchers and tech practitioners to be more proactively responsible in their projects and products, across a variety of technologies and applications, including but not limited to AI and machine learning. Her current research includes exposing, investigating, and countering problematic and potentially harmful narratives in scientific and technical practice, as well as designing, centering, and realizing imaginaries around relational, participatory, and community-driven tech ethics.  She is also one of the leaders of an on-going workstream around neurotech, neurodata, and neuroethics organized by Research, the AI Ethics board, CPO, GRA, and HR. Sara's methodological lenses are influenced by patient-centered praxis, as well as feminist and critical disability theory.

If you're interested in connecting with Sara, you can email her at sara.e.berger@ibm.com or send her a message on LinkedIn.

Full CV with full publication list is linked here: CV