Sipho C. Langa
Research Software Engineer
Co-Lead
Founder
About Me
Professionally, I am a Research Software Engineer working in Causal AI, an area of artificial intelligence concerned with modeling cause-and-effect relationships to support reasoning and inference beyond statistical correlation. Alongside my engineering work, I serve as Co-Lead of the University of Maryland Tech Policy Hub, where I contribute to research and policy analysis on technology governance.
More specifically, my research interests sit at the intersection of technology, policy, and law. Drawing on mechanism design, I examine the relationships between emerging technologies, consumer welfare, market competition, and individual rights. I am particularly interested in how existing legal and institutional frameworks apply to emerging technologies, where they fall short, and how they might evolve.
Education
University of Central Florida
B.S. in Economics and Computational Science
Minor: Cognitive Science
Advisor: Dr. Sharon Woodill
News
2026
EAAMO 2026 Poster
Accepted poster at the ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization.
Launched Phronesis
A nonprofit research library offering free access to hand-selected academic, legal, and technical resources on technology policy.
Emerging Tech For Social Good Summit
Attended the Emerging Tech For Social Good Summit to explore how emerging technologies can be leveraged to address social challenges and create positive impact.
Experience
Current
Co-Lead
2026 – PresentFounder and Executive Director
2025 – PresentResearch Engineer, Causal AI and ML
2022 – PresentResearch Projects
1 of 2
A New Fairness Doctrine or Something Else?
A policy essay tracing debates over the public's access to information from the FCC's Fairness Doctrine to today's algorithmically curated platforms and AI systems. It weighs paths forward, from a modernized fairness obligation to public-interest duties around recommender design and amplification, and argues the country must decide how it governs access to information in an algorithmic age.
