Rodrigo Ochigame

Rodrigo Ochigame is an Assistant Professor in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University's Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. Specializing in the history and anthropology of computing/AI, his research explores Cold War computational models and contemporary machine learning applications in science. He holds a PhD from MIT's History, Anthropology, and STS program and a BA from UC Berkeley. Ochigame’s Veni grant-funded project 'Beyond Ground Truth' examines computational modeling in mathematics, physics, and climate science.

Teaching focuses on science/technology studies, digital infrastructures, and social theory. Recent projects include Remodeling Rationality (global history of non-standard computing) and Informática do oprimido (2025 Portuguese publication). He co-organized the 2025 NIAS-Lorentz Workshop on Mechanization in Mathematics and spent Summer 2025 at CERN studying machine learning in particle physics research.

• Grants: NWO Veni Grant (2024), KIEM grant for CARMA Archive
• Awards: 2020 Bob Williams Research Paper Award

Labs/Teams: Member of Leiden's Digitalization Research Cluster, advisory board member for Critical AI (Duke UP). Research emphasizes ethical implications of computational systems and their historical contexts.