When the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in August 2021, UNESCO, through its Director-General Audrey Azoulay, issued an urgent appeal to protect the country’s cultural monuments as vital to its future, reminding those who had forgotten of the devastation that in 2001 two enormous Buddha statues in the Bamiyan Valley were hit by the Taliban.

Eleven months later, a Greek scientist, Bright Christia, took action from America. RSprofessor of social sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the sociotechnical laboratory at Boston University., gathered a team of researchers and using virtual reality is trying to save the cultural heritage of a long-suffering country. The original company called “Ways to See” is in full development and an international team of archaeologists, architects, conservators, digital artists and journalists is collaborating to achieve it. Their first priority is to record historical monuments that are in danger (as a matter of priority) from the destructive fury of the Taliban..

“Afghan partners send us data in the form of digital downloads and photos, and we process it to create a virtual reality,” explains the doctor. Bright Christia. “Thus, monuments are stored digitally so that they can be maintained or restored by specialists in the future. At the same time, creating virtual models of monuments they become “visible” through the screen of our mobile phone. Think about what a useful educational material this could be for the children of Afghanistan, who today grow up far from their homeland and cannot get in touch with their cultural heritage,” he adds.

“Think of what a useful educational resource this material could be for the children of Afghanistan, who today are growing up far away from their homeland and have no opportunity to come into contact with their cultural heritage.”

Close ties with Afghanistan

For the 44-year-old MIT professor, a Columbia School of International and Political Science graduate and a Harvard PhD in public administration, Afghanistan is no stranger. Instead of. For seven years, from 2004 to 2011, Fotini Kristia traveled around Afghanistan, where she stayed for four months a year, each time getting to know more and more new places and people. Actually a long time ago participated in the evaluation of the largest regional development program funded by the World Bank, worth more than $ 2 billion. “This program organized local council elections in which women also participated. The participants decided how they wanted to distribute the money in their community based on local needs. At first, we noticed some positive developments in terms of development and education, but, unfortunately, they turned out to be transient. With the end of funding, the status quo is back to normal,” notes the MIT professor, adding that in 2011 she was forced to stop her research in Afghanistan because she became disillusioned with the unsustainable results.

“There was no way to ‘translate’ these locally funded projects such as schools, bridges, wells into significant efforts to strengthen women’s rightswhich was also our goal. These communities, unfortunately, continued to tolerate local customs of child abuse, murder of women, etc.”

She herself recalls many touching stories from those years when she lived in Afghanistan, constantly wearing a hijab for security reasons. He describes the excitement of little girls in Afghan villages seeing running water from a well for the first time, about the first coming of electricity to a local school, about the beginning of water supply on small farms.

However, he will not forget some of the difficult moments he went through then, which he talks about. “In the summer of 2008, while gathering data with my team, we found ourselves in a community in the Farah area. We were told that we had to leave that very night because a local warlord ordered the “American” to be kidnapped at dawn with the intention of selling me to the Taliban.. Fortunately, we succeeded.”

Fotini Christia escaped the danger of being kidnapped by the Taliban, and a year later she managed to survive typhoid fever, which she contracted in Daikundi, after spending a month in villages in the area without running water. “I did not know if I would survive because it was three days before I could return to Kabul to receive medical attention. I was treated there in a German clinic, and, fortunately, in the end everything worked out.

During the time that the Greek teacher lived in Afghanistan, she developed strong friendships with many local residents, which she still maintains.

“In August 2021, with the country once again in the hands of the Taliban, I was able to help Shaheem and Hamidullah, two Afghans with whom I had worked in the past, escape with the rest of their families — 15 in all — and arrive safely in America. They have already found work and are enjoying their new life here,” says Ms Christia.

Using big data against systemic racism

In addition to her love and fervent support for Afghanistan, Fotini Christia, through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is participating in a concerted effort to combat systemic racism using big data.

“We have reviewed hundreds of millions of calls to the police to find out whether there is racial discrimination among those arrested and whether force is used during the arrest.”

“We have created groups of scientists from different departments of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and are studying how we can use big data and artificial intelligence applications to combat racial discrimination in areas such as health care, policing, social services.. For example, we are working on how to fix the algorithms that lead to discrimination in mental health care, we have reviewed hundreds of millions of calls to the police to find out if there is racial discrimination in who is being arrested, and if so, in what way. Violence during detention. We are also trying to fix mortgage algorithms that discriminate against African Americans,” explains the MIT social science professor, emphasizing her the tremendous power that data science has. “It shows us exactly what the data says so we can make informed decisions. It matters though the results are interpreted correctly in order to appropriately shape policies that directly affect the lives of these people“.

Solutions to the acute problems of modern society

Fotini Christia, who has now completed a 14-year academic career, has received, as she reports in K, offers for rector positions, as well as leadership positions at the Academy, which she leaves for future consideration. Today its focus is quite different. “MIT is a university that allows for constant growth both as an individual and as an academic. That’s why, I can’t help but think about how the social sciences, combined with technology, can help us in the next period to solve the pressing problems of modern society.“.

When asked if he would ever consider returning to Greece, the answer is almost given: “In Greece there is neither a support structure for the social sciences, nor any general rationale for how they relate to the technical sciences. However, I am glad that my colleagues at MIT, such as Konstantinos Daskalakis, are trying to come up with ways to change this, and I applaud their every effort.”