Eleonore Fournier-Tombs

Eleonore Fournier-Tombs is a Senior Researcher at the United Nations University (UNU) Centre for Policy Research and serves as Research Lead for the United Nations High Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence. Her work explores the intersection of technology with gender equality, migration, democratic governance and public health, drawing on extensive experience as a data scientist across the UN system.

In 2012, she received the United Nations Twenty One Award from Secretary General Ban Ki moon for her contributions at the United Nations Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) during the Rio 2012 Conference on Sustainable Development. From 2012 to 2015, she worked with the Human Development Report Office, where she managed global human development data and digital communications.

Between 2015 and 2018, she completed her Doctorate at the University of Geneva, developing a machine learning method to assess the quality of online political deliberations. She subsequently held a post doctoral fellowship at McGill University, applying this method to analyse parliamentary debates in the Canadian territories of Nunavut, Yukon and the Northwest Territories.

From 2018 to 2020, she served as a data scientist at the Centre for Humanitarian Data within the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), contributing notably to modelling the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic in humanitarian settings. She continued related work at the World Bank from 2020 to 2021, where she also contributed to climate policy research in Afghanistan, Morocco and Jamaica.