Bio
Nava Haghighi is an artist, critical technical designer, and computer science researcher specializing in human-computer interaction and human-centered AI. She is a fellow at the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech where her research examines the taken-for-granted ontological boundaries underlying the AI development pipeline. She builds methods and systems that center ontological multiplicity, expanding the space of imagined possibilities by making existing boundaries visible and questionable. Haghighi has worked as a PhD researcher with Apple’s Human-Centered Machine Learning and Body-Sensing Intelligence groups, as a research resident at SPACE10, and as a designer with design firms and global clients. She co-founded Atolla, an AI skincare company acquired in 2021. She holds a PhD in computer science from Stanford University, a dual master’s degree in computer science and integrated design and management from MIT, and a bachelor of architecture from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.