Isak Engdahl (he/him) is a visiting student researcher in the Department of Film and Media at the University of California, Berkeley, hosted by Associate Professor Jacob Gaboury. Isak is a PhD candidate in Sociology specializing in Science and Technology Studies at Lund University, Sweden. He is part of the “Show & Tell” project led by Associate Professor Alison Gerber, funded by the European Research Council, which explores evidentiary 3D reconstructions in different contexts, focusing on how these images are shared and used among professional groups.
Isak's dissertation is titled “Pixels and Weights: Teaching Computers to See.” By observing and interviewing actors in computer vision labs, the dissertation focuses on how engineers manage their work tasks and navigate human and computer interactions. His ethnographic case studies examine the work processes in developing visual AI components and systems, particularly how engineers create benchmark datasets and implement object detection models to teach computers to ‘see’ in specific settings. His research has been published in Big Data & Society and The De Gruyter Handbook of Automated Futures: Imaginaries, Interactions and Impact, and presented at NeurIPS and STS conferences organized by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) and the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST).
During his stay at UC Berkeley, Isak will engage with a computer vision laboratory and related events to understand the collaborative processes behind engineering and scaling AI techniques for broader applications. His focus includes the organization and division of work within research teams and how platforms and tools support inter-team cooperation. This involves analyzing the tools that enable cooperation among different teams and sites through shared resources and references.
In his previous research, Isak has investigated user interactions with recommender systems on social media platforms using interviews, observations, and user diaries, drawing on methods from ethnography, human-computer interaction, and user experience research. He has also been a student research assistant to Professor Jerome Karabel at the Department of Sociology at UC Berkeley.