Meredith McFadden
Research Scientist
Meredith McFadden is a Research Scientist in AI Ethics at the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University. Her work focuses on the ethical evaluation of autonomous systems, AI-enabled decision-making, and the development of normative frameworks that bridge philosophical theory and practical deployment.
She holds a PhD in Philosophy with a specialization in agency and practical reasoning from the University of California, Riverside, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Her academic research and teaching has focused on the ethical dimensions of medicine, technology, and political life. As Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, she taught courses in Ethics of Technology, Bioethics, Environmental Ethics, and Political Violence and Immigration.
Her research has been presented at international conferences, including the American Philosophical Association, the Philosophy of Disability Conference, and the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress. Peer-reviewed work includes publications in Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy and Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, with contributions to public-facing platforms such as The Prindle Post and Pea Soup. Topics span from AI accountability and epistemic justice to disability ethics and climate action.
Prior to joining the institute, she was a Senior Research Scientist at STR and served as the Principal Investigator for the DARPA-funded project Autonomy Standards and Ideals, which develops quantifiable standards for assessing the ethical maturity of autonomous weapons systems in alignment with military operational values. She also worked as an ontological engineer at Cycorp, designing structured knowledge systems to support machine reasoning in medical applications. In an earlier fellowship at Lawrence University, she served as the Uihlein Fellow in Biomedical Ethics, and have contributed public-facing ethical analysis as a journalist for The Prindle Post, a digital publication of public philosophy dedicated to current events and cultural issues.
Her work integrates ethical theory with formal modeling, AI system design, and institutional governance. She has delivered invited presentations at venues such as the Prindle Institute Ethics Writing Retreat and the ATINER International Conference on Philosophy and has published in venues addressing both philosophical scholarship and emerging technology ethics.