Dr Gabrielle (Gabby) Samuel is a Lecturer in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine and co-Director of SHADE - a research group and network at the intersection of Sustainability, Health, AI, Digital technologies, and the Environment. Her main research interests relate to the social/ethical issues associated with digital health, big data, and AI.

She is trained in sociology and ethics (Medical sociology PhD and Bioethics MA) with a background in the life sciences (Molecular Genetics PhD). She draws mainly on qualitative research methods and has published extensively in the field of biobanking, genomics, digital health, forensic/health genetic technologies, research ethics, and research ethics committees, and social media and AI/big data research.

Gabby is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics and Humanities & Social Sciences Communications. She supervises both undergraduate and master's dissertations and welcomes PhD students. She is also a member of the Digital Environmental Sustainability Ethics and Clinical Ethics and Law in Society research groups at Oxford University – and the King’s Climate Action Network.

Research

• Sustainability and environmental justice
• Genomics and biobanking
• Digital health, health apps, AI and big data
• Responsibilities, decision-making and value trade-offs
• Research ethics and research ethics committees
• Ethics and sociology
• Qualitative research

Gabby is particularly interested in the environmental impacts of these technologies and her research programme explores ethical and governance issues related to this. She has argued that the moral gaze of technologies should include not only their use, but also where they have come from and where they are disposed.

She draws on concepts of sustainability, justice, power, equity, responsibility and neo-liberalism to do this. She is particularly interested in decision-making and how values-trade-offs are balanced, and how this relates to moral obligation, responsibility, justice and critical justice scholarship.

Outside of environmental sustainability, her research focuses on the ethical and sociological aspects of innovative, digital health, and genomics technologies and methodologies.

Here she explores responsible research and innovation through concepts of participation and reflection. She is particularly interested in notions of trust/trustworthiness, and the importance of behaviour change models to be considered in wider sociological and ethical literature.

Gabby's research is funded by a range of grants, including a Wellcome Fellowship, which is exploring the environmental sustainability of data-driven health research.

She is also a co-Investigator on a ESPRC collaborative project PARIS-DE (Design Principles and Responsible Innovation for a Sustainable Digital Economy), led by Professor Gordon Blair at Lancaster, and holds two MRC grants exploring the intersection of health and environmental impacts, in the context of neuroimaging and biobanking.

PhD supervision

Gabby is happy to supervise projects in areas associated with big data, genomics, AI, sustainability, ethics or similar

Research projects and awards

• 2023-2024. £48,529.80 Samuel G, Lucivero, F. Exploring digital health promises and practices through a sustainability lens. Implementing sustainability in decision-making. King’s Climate and Sustainability Seed Fund
• 2021-2024. £883,623 Blair G (PI), Jirotka M, Knowles B, Lucivero F, Samuel G (CI), Sorrell S, Widdicks K, Webb H. Design Principles and Responsible Innovation for a Sustainable Digital Economy (Paris-DE). ESPRC
• 2021-2027. £246,365 Samuel, G. The environmental sustainability of data-driven health research: a case-study of genomics and digital phenotyping in the UK. Wellcome Research Fellowship
• 2023. £7,200 Global Engagement Partnership Fund, KCL, to cement collaborations with Indian and African colleagues in the area of environmental sustainability.
• 2022-2023. Partner. UKRI Net-Zero Digital Research Infrastructure Scoping.
• 2022-2023. £100,792 Samuel G. Farley, M. Developing a roadmap for environmentally sustainable ultra-low temperature storage in biobanking. MRC
• 2022-2024. £125,164 Rae, C. Selvan, R, Samuel G. Developing environmentally sustainable best practices for human brain imaging. MRC

Policy impact

• Co-editor of ITU (International Telecommunications Union) AI4EE (Requirements of AI and other Emerging Technologies to Ensure Environmental Efficiency) working group technical report: Driving AI-IoT towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 2022
• Contribution to Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST) note on environmental impacts of the digital sector. Expert stakeholder contribution, and referenced within report (report can be found here: https://post.parliament.uk/research-briefings/post-pn-0677/). 2022.

Media and public engagement

• Exhibitions:
  • Who's Responsible, Bringing the Human to the Artificial, King's (May/June 2023)
  • Test your digital sustain-ability, Southampton Science Festival (March 2023). Read about her experience. 
• Video appearances:
  • Environmental impacts of personalised medicine
  • Environmental Impacts with Manufacturing Personalised Medicine
  • The environmental impacts of digital technologies
• Podcast appearances:
  
  • The ethics of personalised medicine with Dr Rachel Horton, Centre of Personalised Medicine, University of Oxford (2022)
  • Artificial Intelligence, who cares? Appeared on podcast as an expert in AI and environmental sustainability. BBC Global News, September 2023.
• School outreach:
  • Changing our world by re-imagining digital technologies, presenting to 70 students from six local schools, as part of 'Our World', Oxford University (September 2022)
  • Environmental sustainability and digital technologies, one-day school workshop at Cheney School (March 2023)
• Documentary appearances: Dataiku AI & Us, Fortemusfilms, speaking  on the ethical and environmental issues of AI (2022)
• News interviews: Personalized medicine sector needs to consider environmental impact, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (2022)

Further details

See Gabby's research profile