Meet our speakers

Ananta Agarwal

Journalism student
Annie Lab at the University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong

Ananta Agarwal is a final-year journalism student at the University of Hong Kong. She worked as a student fact-checker at Annie Lab between January and May in 2021. She also worked as an intern at AFP Fact Check over the summer.

Andy Carvin

Managing Editor
Digital Forensic Reseach Lab (DFRLab)
USA

Andy Carvin is senior fellow and managing editor at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) based in Washington D.C., where he leads the lab’s research and reporting efforts. Andy is an award-winning journalist who has pioneered new forms of online collaboration for more than 20 years. Andy was senior strategist at NPR, where he founded the company’s social media desk and developed new reporting techniques to improve the quality and diversity of NPR’s journalism. Andy was also founder and editor-in-chief of reported.ly, a social news initiative at First Look Media. Using social media and digital forensic tools, reported.ly covered breaking news stories around the world, with a particular emphasis on human rights and social justice. Andy is the author of the book, Distant Witness: Social Media, The Arab Spring And A Journalism Revolution, published by CUNY Journalism Press.

Ariel Bogle

Analyst
ASPI's International Cyber Policy Centre 
Australia

Ariel is an analyst with ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre, where she researches information operations and extremism. Most recently, she was a technology reporter with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, where she covered online disinformation and surveillance. Her reporting has been published in the New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic and Slate, among other places.

Aye Min Thant

Features Editor
Frontier Myanmar
Thailand

Aye Min Thant is a Burmese-American journalist and the features editor for Frontier Myanmar. Aye holds degrees in gender studies, anthropology, and Asian studies. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2019 as part of the Reuters team covering the Rohingya crisis and its aftermath.

Christopher Voegeli

Behavioral Scientist
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
USA

Chris Voegeli, Ph.D., MPH, is a behavioral scientist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he is the co-lead of the Insights team in the Vaccine Task Force. Chris's topic area of expertise is the credibility of government of health information. Over the years, he has supported local, state, and the US federal government's communication efforts around HPV and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, HIV prevention messaging, and the evaluation of these efforts.

Craig Silverman

Reporter
ProPublica
Canada

Craig Silverman is an award-winning journalist and author and one of the world's leading experts on online disinformation, fake news, and digital investigations. He recently joined ProPublica as a reporter investigating voting, platforms, disinformation, and online manipulation. He's also the editor of the European Journalism Centre’s Verification Handbook series. Craig previously served as media editor of BuzzFeed News, where he pioneered coverage of digital disinformation and media manipulation. He received a George Polk Award in 2021 for a series of articles about Facebook, and is the recipient of the Carey McWilliams Award from the American Political Science Association, which honors “a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.” His 2019 series exposing a global Facebook advertising scam was also named investigation of the year by the Canadian Association of Journalists. 

Dacia Herbulock

Director, 
Science Media Centre (NZ)
New Zealand

Dacia is Director and founding member of New Zealand’s Science Media Centre, a publicly-funded initiative that supports high quality journalism by making experts and evidence accessible when science is in the headlines. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the SMC has been instrumental in connecting news media with reliable information and context from rapidly emerging research on everything from vaccines and epidemiology to mental health and economic impacts. With over a decade of experience working on the front lines of breaking news and science, the SMC is uniquely placed to reflect on ways controversial issues emerge and evolve in the public arena.

Daisuke Furuta

Teaching Fellow
Google
Japan

Daisuke, Google News Lab Teaching Fellow based in Tokyo, is a journalist, factchecker and trainer working for digital transformation of Japanese news ecosystem. Before Google, he was founder and editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed Japan and he started his career as news reporter at The Asahi Shimbun.

Darshini Kandasamy

Co-founder
Malaysia Information Literacy Education (MILE)
Malaysia

Darshini Kandasamy is an award-winning editor and journalist, and media literacy advocate. She's currently editor at Between The Lines, a daily email newsletter that aims to counter disinformation by curating, summaring and contextualising daily news in Malaysia. In 2019, she co-founded the Malaysia Information Literacy Education (MILE) that develops and conducts information literacy workshops for Malaysian youths. MILE is also the creator of the "Choices I Make" online game.

David Herlambang

Vice President of Strategic and Business Development
Katadata
Indonesia

David has extensive experience in research and corporate advisory. For corporate advisory projects, he led numerous complex transactions such as IPO process, market and industry, research policy and stakeholder analysis. Notably, David was involved in education and commercialization of blockchain technology in Indonesia.

Edward Gomez

Journalist
Between the Lines
Malaysia

Edward Gomez is a journalist and educator with over two decades of experience. He was a deputy news editor at The Star, Malaysia’s leading English newspaper, and currently writes for Between The Lines, a daily email newsletter that aims to counter misinformation by summarising and contextualising the news. He’s also a PhD candidate at the University of Malaya, where he’s researching the emerging field of constructive journalism.

Eoghan Sweeney

Consultant/Trainer at OSINT Essentials
OSINT Essentials
Germany

Eoghan Sweeney is an online media specialist and trainer who has helped establish, develop, and support digital verification and fact-checking operations at media worldwide. To date, he has provided training or talks in 27 countries across five continents. Based on a decade of specialisation in digital verification and fact-checking, he designs, creates and delivers materials and workshops. In 2018, he created OSINT Essentials, which provides resources and expertise for open-source investigations and media literacy.

Esther Chan

Bureau Editor, APAC
First Draft
Australia

Esther Chan is the APAC Bureau Editor of First Draft. On a daily basis she leads the editorial coverage of mis- and disinformation in the region and conducts, edits and publishes in-depth research about information disorder. Esther started her career in television as an investigative reporter before moving onto digital journalism at Storyful and AFP FactCheck. She specialises in online newsgathering, verification, factchecking and conducting training workshops to help journalists and others to identify threat actors and deepen their understanding of the online disinformation landscape.

Fujio Toriumi

Professor
The University of Tokyo
Japan

Fujio Toriumi is a Professor of Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo. He received his Ph.D degree from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan in 2004. His research interests are Computational Social Science and AI technologies for Society.

Geetika Vashishata

Adjunct Faculty
Manipal Institute of Communication, MAHE, Karnataka
India

Geetika Vashishata is a media educator at MIC, Mahe, and a digital media literacy trainer with FactShala. She started her career in 2007 as a print journalist with UNI and radio anchor in AIR. Ms Vashishata shifted to academics to pursue her goal of higher learning in the field of communication and research. She has a keen interest in digital media literacy and digital journalism.

Gigi Tang

Journalism student
Annie Lab at the University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong

Gigi Tang is a second-year journalism student at the University of Hong Kong. She worked as a student fact-checker at Annie Lab between June and August in 2021.

Irene Jay Liu

News Lab Lead, APAC, 
Google 
Singapore

Irene Jay Liu leads Google News Lab in the Asia-Pacific region. She was previously an investigative reporter and data editor at Reuters, where she was a 2017 Pulitzer finalist in the national reporting category. Earlier, she worked at the South China Morning Post and as a political reporter with the Times Union in Albany, New York. Before relocating to Singapore, she taught data-driven investigative journalism at the University of Hong Kong and Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Jaemin Jung

Professor
KAIST
South Korea

Jaemin Jung is a professor and Head of Moon Soul Graduate School of Future Strategy at the KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). He has an interest in news engagement, robot journalism, and effects of media literacy training.

Jisha Krishnan

Editor
FirstCheck (DataLEADS)
India

An Indian health journalist with 17+ years of professional experience, Jisha is the Editor of First Check, the flagship, award-winning fact-checking initiative of Health Analytics Asia. First Check is the signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). Jisha is a Google-certified trainer on fact-checking and online verification, driven by the relentless desire to tell – and learn from – meaningful stories that have the power to transform lives.

Jong-Yoon Hong

Deputy Director
SNU FactCheck Center
South Korea

Jong-Yoon Hong is the Deputy Director of SNU Factcheck Center and a BK professor of Communication at the Seoul National University. He has an interest in media policy and digital journalism.

Joon-il Kim

CEO/Senior Fact Checker
NewsToF
Korea

Joon-il Kim is a senior factcheker and founder of NewsToF, a fact-checking news media in South Korea.

Joshua Lee

Journalism student
Annie Lab at the University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong

Joshua Lee is a final-year journalism student at the University of Hong Kong. He worked as a student fact-checker at Annie Lab between June and August in 2020.

Kimina Lyall

Deputy Managing Director 
Dart Centre Asia Pacific
Australia

Kimina Lyall is a former journalist and foreign correspondent who is completing her re-training to become a psychologist and yoga teacher. Kimina works with the Dart Centre to help journalists increase their resilience, as well as working with organisations to build trauma-aware newsrooms.

Kritika Goel

Associate Editor, Fact-Check
The Quint
India

Kritika is Associate Editor at The Quint and leads its fact-checking team – WebQoof. She covers mis/disinformation with a special focus on politics and breaking news stories.

Kuang Keng Kuek Ser

Lead trainer
DataN
Malaysia

Keng is an award-winning digital journalist, data journalism trainer and media consultant. He has been conducting digital journalism workshops across Asia and providing consulting services to media organizations in data, visual and interactive journalism. In 2019, Keng joined the global efforts to counter online misinformation through the Malaysia Information Literacy Education (MILE), an organization he co-founded that develops and conducts information literacy workshops for Malaysian students and youths.

Lisa Poot

Project Manager
DROG Group
The Netherlands

Lisa Poot is a project manager at Bad News Company. She has a background in Russian studies and is currently working in the field of serious game development. 

Masaru Zenke

Senior Producer
NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation)
Japan

Masaru Zenke is a senior producer for current affairs programmes and feature documentaries at the Japanese public broadcaster NHK. He was correspondent for Washington DC from 2014-2018. He has won a number of TV awards.He has also co-authored a number of books.

Masato Kajimoto

Associate Professor of Practice
University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong

Masato Kajimoto, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Practice at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre, the University of Hong Kong. Masato specializes in news literacy education and misinformation ecosystem research in Asia. In 2019 he founded ANNIE (Asian Network of News and Information Educators) to develop teaching and learning materials specific to the region with other likeminded experts in the field. He also runs the student-driven, fact-checking newsroom called Annie Lab (https://annielab.org) at the university.

Melody Hsieh

Founder
Fake News Cleaner
Taiwan

Melody Hsieh gathered friends with enthusiasm to initiate FakeNewsCleaner and gathered many youth volunteers to bring media literacy into the local community, and also lead the audiences to arise in critical thinking when receiving information. Mainly focus on face-to-face communication on streets, in lectures...

Miguel D’Souza

Teaching Fellow, Australia and NZ
Google
Australia

Miguel D’Souza is Google News Teaching Fellow for 2020. Miguel began his media career as a radio volunteer at Sydney’s 2SER-FM, starting the influential Sydney’s hip-hop show, The Mothership Connection, and writing about the growing music and street culture. He started working on the Internet in the mid-90s, working for Seven, News Corp, SBS before establishing a multimedia unit at AAP, working in live news delivery, editorial systems and training and eventually the growing area of open source investigations (OSINT).

Minseong Kim

Teaching Fellow
Google
South Korea

Ray Minseong Kim, KR’s Google News Lab Teaching Fellow, dreams of the growing potential of KR digital journalism’s own. He has experimented the digital-native journalism and tried to find and share a hope to transform to digital. He started his career as a Journalist in 2004, and found and implemented the news R&D strategy in the KR newsroom through "NewsLabit”, the first news laboratory model in KR for six years from 2015. Currently as a teaching fellow for Google News Lab APAC, he is researching the new values, methodologies, and creativity of digital journalism. As an adjunct professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies' Graduate School of Journalism, he is researching on the future of digital journalism with students

Nobuyuki Okumura

Director/Professor
FIJ/Musashi University
Japan

Nobuyuki Okumura is a director and a board member at FIJ (Fact Check Initiative Japan) and a journalism professor at Musashi University in Tokyo. He was originally a news producer/reporter at TV Asahi mainly covering politics and diplomacy. He has been actively covering various issues in journalism since he started his academic career as a professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto in 2005. His research topics range from digital storytelling to telecommunication policy and internet governance issues. He has been contributing to various news sites. He holds an M.A. degree from Sophia University in International Relations. He was also awarded the Fulbright Journalist Program award in 2002-03 and conducted research at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, also Fulbright Scholar Program in 2018-19 and conducted research at Sigur Center for Asian Studies, George Washington University.

Olivia Pirie-Griffiths

Executive Director
Alliance for Journalist's Freedom
Australia

Olivia runs the Alliance for Journalists' Freedom, a press freedom organisation founded by Peter Greste, Peter Wilkinson and Chris Flynn after Greste's release from 400 days of prison in Egypt. The AJF works with Australian governments to ensure press freedom support in law, and campaigns in the region wherever journalists are censored, threatened, imprisoned or killed. 

Raisa Serafica

Unit Head of Civic Engagement
Rappler Inc
Philippines

Raisa Marielle Serafica is the Unit Head of Civic Engagement in Rappler, an online news organization based in the Philippines. As head of MovePH, her main mandate is to build communities of action around their core advocacies and campaigns. For 2021, these are: 1) media and democracy (includes fighting disinformation), 2) human rights, and 3) civic engagement and governance (includes our campaign ahead of 2022 elections).

Roman Adamczyk

Research Coordinator and OSINT investigator
EU DisinfoLab
Belgium

Roman Adamczyk is the research coordinator for the EU DisinfoLab, an independent NGO that focuses on tackling disinformation campaigns targeting the European Union. He holds two Master’s degrees in Geoeconomy and Strategic Intelligence from the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) and Management from Grenoble Business School. Since July 2019, he has worked on multiple investigations that uncovered activities of disinformation networks targeting Europe and contributed to several studies about disinformation trends in Western Europe. He is one of the four authors of "Indian Chronicles, a deep dive into a 15-Year influence operation targeting the EU and UN to serve Indian interests".

Sam Gregory

Program Director
WITNESS
US/UK

Sam Gregory is Program Director of WITNESS (www.witness.org) which helps people use video and technology to defend human rights. Sam’s current work focuses on the threats and opportunities as emerging technologies such as AI intersect with disinformation, media manipulation, and rising authoritarianism. An expert on new forms of misinformation and disinformation as well as innovations in preserving trust and authenticity he leads WITNESS' global 'prepare, don't panic' work on emerging threats such as deepfakes and emerging solutions such as authenticity infrastructure and on new opportunities such as livestreamed and co-present storytelling for action and smartphone witnessing for human rights. Quoted in major media worldwide, he has spoken at Davos and the White House and publishes frequently on issues in technology and human rights. He is a former Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, is on the Technology Advisory Board of the ICC, co-chairs the Partnership on AI’s Expert Group on AI and the Media and previously taught 2010-2018 at the Harvard Kennedy School. 

Sander van der Linden

Professor of Social Psychology
University of Cambridge
UK

Sander van der Linden, Ph.D., is Professor of Social Psychology in Society and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He has won numerous awards for his research on human judgment, communication, and decision-making, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the Sage Early Career Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), the Frank Prize in Public Interest Research from the University of Florida and the Sir James Cameron Medal for the Public Understanding of Risk from the Royal College of Physicians. He co-designed the award-winning fake news game Bad News, which has been played by millions of people around the world and frequently advises governments and social media companies on how to fight misinformation. His research is regularly featured in outlets such as the New York Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, and the BBC and he has been described by WIRED magazine as one of “15 top thinkers” and by Fast Company Design as one “four heroes who are defending digital democracy online”. He is currently working on two new books “The Truth Vaccine” (WW Norton/HarperCollins) and the Psychology of Misinformation (Cambridge University Press). Before joining Cambridge, he held academic positions at Princeton, Yale, and the LSE.

Sanjeev Kumar

Associate Professor
All India Institure of Medical Sciences
India

Dr. Sanjeev is an Associate Professor of Community & Family Medicine at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal (India). He teaches medical and nursing students, provide ambulatory medical care to patients and conduct research in fields of health behaviour & communication, non-communicable diseases, medical education, HIV etc

Santi Astuti

Lecturer, Digital Literacy Activist
Tular Nalar/Mafindo
Indonesia

Santi Indra Astuti is a media/digital literacy activists since 2007. In 2017, she leads the R&D Committee of MAFINDO. In the same year, she also co-founded Indonesia Digital Literacy Activists Network (JAPELIDI). She's also a lecturer in the Faculty of Communication Science, Bandung Islamic University (UNISBA), teaching media literacy and media studies. Santi has began her PhD at School of Communication, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang, Malaysia. Last year, she was appointed as supervisor of STOP HOAX Indonesia, a fact checking program dedicated to housewife and young people in Indonesia to fight against mis/disinformation. This year, she is responsible to manage TULAR NALAR, a critical thinking program targeted at schools and colleges.

Shawn Goh

Policy Researcher
Singapore

Shawn is a media and internet policy researcher. His research focuses on mis/disinformation, digital inclusion, online civic engagement, and policy communication. He is currently an incoming MSc candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute and was formerly Research Assistant at the Institute of Policy Studies, National University of Singapore from 2017 to 2021.

Summer Hui-Min Chen

Chief Editor
Taiwan FactCheck Center
Taiwan

Summer Chen is the Chief Editor of Taiwan Factcheck Center. Before being a fact-checker, she was a journalist for a daily newspaper. She started working as a professional fact-checker since May 2019.

Supinya Klangnarong

Co-founder, Editor
Cofact Thailand
Thailand

Supinya is an Ashoka and Eisenhower Fellow, former NBTC Commissioner, media policy specialist, awarded for Communications and Social Change Award 2006 by University of Queensland. Currently, Board Member of The National Press Council of Thailand.

Surabhi Malik

Programs Director and Country Lead, India
Internews
India

Surabhi Malik is a media trainer and a verification expert currently working as the Programs Director and Country Lead for India with Internews, an international media development organisations with presence in over 50 countries. She has designed and led many training programs focusing on areas like fact-checking, media literacy, mobile journalism and digital safety, including two of the biggest collaborative fact-checking training and media literacy efforts in India that have resulted in the launch of many independent initiatives. As a Teaching Fellow with Google News Lab in 2016-2018, she held numerous workshops for journalists and newsrooms on online verification, data journalism and digital safety. She was previously the Deputy News Editor at NDTV and has also worked with the Times of India.

Takahiro Kinoshita

Vice President
Cov-Navi
Japan

Takahiro Kinoshita is a vice president of a social marketing group that promotes COVID vaccines in Japan. He collaborates with BuzzFeed Medical Japan and has published many articles that conducted fact-checking based on scientific evidence.

Trinna Leong

Teaching Fellow, Southeast Asia
Google
Malaysia

Trinna runs newsroom trainings for Southeast Asia. A former journalist, Trinna had worked for local and international publications focusing on politics, economy and general news with articles published in Reuters, Al Jazeera, The Wall Street Journal and The Straits Times.

Uma Patel

News Lab Lead, Australia & New Zealand
Google
Australia

Uma is a former business strategist for FT Strategies and a reporter and producer for the ABC and Sky News

Varadarajan Ananthakrishnan

Resident Editor
DataLEADS
India

Varadarajan Ananthakrishnan (Raj) is working as a Resident Editor and Training Lead at DataLEADS. A science graduate, Raj has spent over three decades in broadcast journalism, and media training. He has worked with reputable television channels including Zee News and production houses all over India, and has led newsrooms and editorial teams. His experience ranges from a bilingual director, producer, writer to a fact-checking and media literacy trainer. He is comfortable in English, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati. He is Trainer with the Google News Initiative Training Network and has conducted online verification trainings across India. He has also conducted fact-checking training in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. He was Content Head for the Media Ownership Monitor project which is a part of a global research and advocacy effort to promote transparency and media pluralism.

Yvonne Chua

Associate Professor
University of the Philippines, Diliman - Department of Journalism
Philippines

Yvonne T. Chua is an associate professor of journalism at the University of the Philippines where she teaches journalism ethics, investigative journalism, data journalism and fact-checking. A longtime journalist, Yvonne cofounded the media nonprofit Vera Files, where she started and led various editorial projects from 2008 to early 2019, including the fact-checking initiative Vera Files Fact Check. She coordinated Tsek.ph, a pioneering collaborative fact-checking initiative for the 2019 Philippines elections, and initiated and supervises FactRakers for her students’ fact checks. She has done research on disinformation, hate speech and dangerous speech. Yvonne was previously managing editor of the national daily Ang Pahayagang Malaya and training director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. She has won a number of reporting awards and a National Book Award for her book-length investigation on corruption in Philippine's public education.