Sarah Barrington

I’m Sarah, an Engineer, AI researcher, and Ph.D. student at the UC Berkeley School of Information (supervised by Professor Hany Farid). My research interests span signal processing, synthetic media detection, and digital forensics. My work has been featured at the Nobel Prize Summit, discussed at the White House and on NPR, recognized by the United Nations, and published in Nature Scientific Reports among other academic venues.

Previously, I graduated from the University of Cambridge, UK, with First Class Honors in General & Manufacturing Engineering (BA, MEng, MA), before working at McLaren Formula 1 as an Associate Engineer & Data Scientist in the Modeling & Decision Sciences function. I have since co-founded two technology start-ups, the latter of which was successfully acquired in 2019.

I am a Graduate Fellow at the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab, a Research Scholar at the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, and a UC Berkeley Fellowship Awardee. I have previously held the 2022 US-UK Fulbright Award for Data and Analytics, Scholarship Visionary of the Year award (IMechE, 2017), James Clayton Undergraduate Scholarship (IMechE 2012-16), and both the Ann Jemima Clough and Eleanor Sidgwick Prizes for academic excellence and dissertation performance respectively (Newnham College, University of Cambridge, 2016).

Outside of academia: I am working towards my Private Pilot License, I climb and hike in beautiful places (including in Yosemite Valley!), and I try to go to as many Formula 1 races as I can. I also bake for a wonderful local charity called Cake4Kids. And by the way… I am British, with the accent to match!