Samuel J. Bell
Machine learning fairness, robustness and metascience.

Iâm Sam đ, a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at FAIR, Metaâs fundamental AI research group. I currently split my time between Paris, France and Cambridge, UK.
While machine learning is often thought of as a pipeline from data to decision, my research investigates the orthogonal pipeline from researcher decisions to impacts, both positive and negative, in broader society. The choices we make as researchersâhow to collect data, which model architecture to use, how we evaluate performance or even how we define the questionâresult in different conclusions, different systems, and ultimately different outcomes for those our systems affect.
For example, my recent NeurIPS paper applied an approximated multiverse analysis in order to understand the effect of researcher choices on the robustness of scientific claims, and my recent FAccT paper, connecting contemporary modelsâ inductive bias towards simplicity to performance disparities, showed that the choice of model architecture can have real, yet unpredictable, impact. In broad strokes, my work aims to highlight the active and concrete role that researchers and model developers must play in creating fair and equitable machine learning systems, no matter how abstract or fundamental our research may seem.
In 2022 I completed my PhD in machine learning as part of the ML@CL group at the University of Cambridge, supervised by Prof. Neil Lawrence. Previously, I have studied at The Alan Turing Institute, obtained a masterâs in natural language processing at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory, and did my bachelorâs in computer science at the University of Manchester.
In between, Iâve simulated financial crises in market risk at Goldman Sachs, built new retail banks at Thought Machine, and developed next generation credit scores at Credit Kudos.
Iâm also the Founder and Chair of The Preptrack Foundation, a registered charity building technology for HIV prevention. Our first app, Preptrack, helps people who use PrEP, the medication that eliminates the risk of HIV infection.
If youâre interested in learning more about what I do, or discussing research collaborations or opportunities, please do drop me a line. My email is samueljamesbell [at] gmail [dot] com. Iâd love to hear from you.