An anthropologist with a long career at the intersection of social research and business and technology, Melissa Cefkin began working on autonomous vehicles in 2015, fulfilling a life-long love of transportation matters. (Her preferred activity in a new place? Public bus rides.) She works at Nissan Research, where she is a Principal Scientist and Senior Manager. Her work has focused on people’s lives and experiences with automated technology of all kinds, especially those related to mobility, collaboration, work, and lives in organizations.
A long-time observer and participant in the growth of anthropological research in and with business, Melissa is the author of numerous publications including the edited volume Ethnography and the Corporate Encounter. She has served as president and conference co-chair for EPIC and recently on the US National Academies of Science committee on Information Technology, Automation and the Workforce. A frequent public and academic speaker, the work she and her colleagues are doing has been cited broadly, including in PBS, Wired, the Financial Times, the Estonian national press, CNN Chile, Canadian Broadcasting, and beyond. Melissa holds a PhD from Rice University and has been a Fulbright scholar; she worked previously at IBM Research, Sapient and the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL).