Cheryl L. Brown
Cheryl L. Brown
Cheryl L. Brown, Ph.D. is Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Political Science
and Public Administration and a faculty affiliate of the School of Data Science, Social Aspects of
Health Initiative, and CyberDNA Center at UNC Charlotte. She received her Ph.D. in Political
Science at the University of Michigan and further educational training in Internet Law at the
Berkman Klein Center of Internet & Society at Harvard University and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE) Vehicular Technology Society Connected & Autonomous Vehicles Summer School at
Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Dr. Brown’s research has focused on the intersectionality of emerging technologies, e.g., radio
frequency identification (RFID), biometrics, artificial intelligence, and autonomous systems, with
health data privacy and protection. Her academic writing includes topics on RFID technology,
smart card technology, genomic privacy data protection, health biometrics and privacy, and
computing education ethics. She was an invited participant in the Health Privacy Sector of the
5th Cybersecurity Framework Workshop of the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) in 2013; and was selected to participate in the ethics in computer science working group
at the inaugural Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computer Science Education
Conference in Chengdu, Sichuan, China in 2019.
Her current research focuses on cultural humility in explainable AI (XAI) for health care, digital
twin and ethics in healthcare, and local to global governance of responsible AI and generative
AI. She has presented her research at conferences and meetings of the American Political
Science Association, American Public Health Association, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
(AIME), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE), Oxford Internet Institute, and Privacy Law Scholars Conference.
She is a Principal Investigator of a multidisciplinary team of researchers in biomedical
informatics, computer science, engineering, medicine, and political science as recipients of a
National Institutes of Health research award studying “Addressing Health Disparities in Heart
Transplant through Fair AI/ML Approaches.”
Dr. Brown is a member of the American Medical Informatics Association, American Political
Science Association, American Public Health Association, ACM, Health Information
Management Systems Society (HIMSS), and IEEE. She is currently teaching a course on digital
twin technology and embedded AI and Internet of Things.