AI can serve as a powerful tool for journalists looking to wrangle huge datasets and spot corruption. But what does this look like in actual investigative reporting projects? Join a conversation with ...
Edward Boyda
chief scientist Earthrise Media
Edward Boyda is a physicist and a co-founder of Earthrise Media, where he runs satellite-based investigations for environmental and human rights reporting. His work includes exposés on illegal gold mining, the global sand trade, the destruction of rainforests for pulpwood production, and the internment of Uighur and Kazahk minorities in Xinjiang, China. For Reuters, in 2018, he conducted one of the first systematic satellite surveys to detail the scale of the Xinjiang internment camp system. Subsequent work with Agence France-Presse documented widespread destruction of Uighur mosques and burial grounds.
Although he prefers working with humans, Boyda also develops intelligent-machine algorithms for journalism and environmental monitoring: An environmental newswire, that scrapes, curates, and geolocates stories from 30,000 URLs a day; a system to detect illegal artisanal mines in the Amazon river basin from satellite imagery; and a system to monitor aggregations of plastic waste at risk of spilling into waterways.
Previously, he was an associate professor of physics at Saint Mary's College of California and a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center.
