Ethics & Innovation: Inside Microsoft's AI for Good Lab

What happens when you point some of the world's strongest analytical tools at problems money alone has never fixed? In this episode of Ethics and Innovation by Oxford+ brought to you by Equinox, host Susannah de Jager speaks with Juan M Lavista Ferres, Corporate Vice President and Chief Data Scientist at Microsoft and director of its AI for Good Lab. Juan explains how a study of 20 million births changed what researchers knew about smoking and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, why a satellite image and a CT scan are the same problem to a machine learning team, and how roughly 100 incoming requests get filtered down to two or three funded projects. The timing is pointed. The World Economic Forum reported in August 2026 that the world faces a shortage of health workers by 2030, according to the World Economic Forum, which is the exact supply gap behind Juan's work on preventable blindness in premature babies. He is equally clear about the limits: no data, no access, no expert partner, no project. Every tool his team builds, he says, could also be used as a weapon. (00:00) - Welcome to Oxford+ (01:42) - From Development Banking to AI for Good (03:49) - What 20 Million Births Revealed about SIDS (05:23) - Why Every Project Needs a Domain Expert (06:21) - Satellite Images and CT Scans: The Same Problem (08:39) - The Funnel and the Tyranny of Choice (10:17) - Data Access, Privacy and Labelled Data (13:50) - Open Source, No Fees and Donated Expertise (16:40) - SPARROW and the Data Collection Problem (20:06) - Legal Help for Women and Girls in Malawi (23:18) - Preventable Blindness and the 36-Hour Window (26:30) - Responsible AI, Bias and Tools Used as Weapons Juan M Lavista Ferres: Juan M Lavista Ferres is Corporate Vice President and Chief Data Scientist at Microsoft and director of the AI for Good Lab, which he co-founded in 2018. He leads a team of data scientists and researchers in AI, machine learning and statistical modelling, working with domain experts on health, sustainability, humanitarian response and accessibility. Before Microsoft he spent five years at the Inter-American Development Bank, and after joining Microsoft in 2009 he worked on the Experimentation Platform and the Bing data mining team before moving into applied research. His SIDS work with academic collaborators was published in Pediatrics, and he is a co-author of the lab's AI for Good book. He is a co-author of the 2025 JAMA Network Open study on AI-enabled screening for retinopathy of prematurity in low-resource settings. Connect with Juan on LinkedIn Susannah de Jager: Susannah is a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience in UK asset management. She has worked closely with industry experts, entrepreneurs, and government officials to shape the conversation around domestic scale-up capital. Connect with Susannah on LinkedIn and Subscribe to the Oxford+ Newsletter for Exclusive Content In this episode of Ethics and Innovation by Oxford+ brought to you by Equinox. Produced and Edited by Story Ninety-Four in Oxford.