Surya Mattu is an award-winning Brooklyn based data journalist, artist and engineer. He builds digital witness tools to investigate algorithmic systems and the ways in which they perpetuate biases and inequalities in society. Mattu leads the Digital Witness Lab at CITP, where he oversees the WhatsApp Watch project.

At the investigative journalism site, The Markup, he created Blacklight, a real-time website privacy inspector, and led Citizen Browser, a first of its kind independent audit of Facebook’s recommendation algorithms. Mattu’s work at The Markup has received public recognition, including two Edward R. Murrow awards and an award from the National Association of Black Journalists. He is also a 2021 University of Michigan Knight Wallace fellow.

Previously, he was a contributing researcher at ProPublica, where he worked on Machine Bias, a series that aims to highlight how algorithmic systems can be biased and discriminate against people. Machine Bias was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Explanatory Journalism. His work has been exhibited at Somerset House, The Haus der Kulturen der Welt , The Whitney Museum, V&A Museum and Bitforms Gallery.