Aaron Gluck-Thaler is a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, and the 2023-2024 IEEE Life Member History Fellow. Aaron studies the history of surveillance and its relationship to scientific practice.

Aaron’s dissertation provides a history of pattern recognition in 20^th century America. It considers how and why scientists in diverse fields––from anthropology to engineering––adopted practices of pattern recognition. The project focuses on how research in pattern recognition acted as an epistemic support for surveillance, changing how people could be identified and what their identity was thought to be composed of. Aaron also works on early histories of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

Aaron holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from McGill University, a MSc in the Social Science of the Internet from the Oxford Internet Institute, and a MSc in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Aaron’s doctoral research has been supported by Harvard’s Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Doctoral Fellowship.

Previous Degrees:

BEng., Mechanical Engineering, McGill University
MSc., Social Science of the Internet, University of Oxford
MSc., History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, University of Oxford