Jesse Woo

Technologist and Senior AI Counsel

Varun Gadh

Technologist and Fellow

Jesse Woo is the Technologist and AI Policy Counsel at the Policing Project's Tech Team. He is an attorney and machine learning engineer with a decade of experience working at the intersection of technology, law, and policy. He is also an expert on the governance and use of data in the policing and national security sectors, and at working across disciplines to understand complex socio-technical systems like AI. Jesse has served as a Tech Policy Fellow in the Office of Senator Ron Wyden, a Fulbright scholar on cross-border data and AI issues at Kyoto University in Japan, and a Research Associate on Privacy and Cybersecurity at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has written about data privacy, robotics and drones in the context of smart cities and published in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal and Connecticut Law Review. He has also been quoted on tech law issues by popular publications such as the Verge and Motherboard.

Jesse holds a masters in computer science from Columbia University and a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law, where he was the executive articles editor on the Washington Law Review. He received his B.A. in history from U.C. Davis.

Varun Gadh is a technologist & fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union. Varun is also a CITP technology fellow at Princeton University and a co-founder of the CITP technology fellowship program.

Previously, he was a technologist at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), where he has served as the lead technology expert in 25+ investigations totaling billions in consumer harm. These investigations addressed technical and legal issues in AI/ML, dark patterns, algorithmic bias, digital advertising, UX/UI, data privacy, and other technology-related topics. He has also contributed to drafting regulations involving emerging technology, user experience, and AI.

Before that, Varun designed and built search engines, ocean cleanup technology, e-commerce experiences, ML-training methods to help those suffering from addiction, self-driving tech, and concept cars at Capital One, McMaster-Carr, and Honda Research. Through this work, he has been awarded nine patents. Additionally, he contributed to technology and research work at Agncy Design, Autodesk, Deeplocal, Carnegie Mellon's College of Computer Science, Northrop Grumman, Stanford University, and Caltech. Varun holds a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University.