The Hub team
Management team
Prof Seth Bullock
Hub Director, University of Bristol
Seth’s principal research interest is complex systems simulation: using modelling techniques developed within AI and complexity science to understand how complex real-world systems behave. He has worked on research problems from archaeology to zoology and on projects tackling complex systems ranging from critical national infrastructure and novel computation to human-AI teaming and the demography of health and social care.
Seth is particularly interested in self-organisation and adaptation in collective systems such as communities of people interacting with AI agents.
Vicky Walter
Senior Hub Manager, University of Bristol
Vicky is the Senior Research Hub Manager, leading the professional services team that supports the AI4CI Hub. With over ten years of experience in various research management and support roles, she brings a wealth of knowledge to the position.
Prior to joining the Hub, Vicky served as the Deputy Manager of the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research. She also managed a European training network and provided pre- and post-award support to a diverse range of academics as a research costing specialist at the University of Bristol and the University of Oxford.
Lauren Clarke (She/Her)
Partnerships Manager, University of Bristol
Lauren is the Hub Partnership Manager within the professional services team, based at the University of Bristol. She has a proven track record of stakeholder engagement and has successfully established and nurtured relationships with academic institutions, industry partners, and government bodies.
With a strong background in joint venture collaborations, Lauren will work with both academic and industry partners to help achieve the Hubs research objectives and develop its future aspirations.
Amy Ardon
Hub Research Administrator, University of Bristol
Amy is the Hub Research Administrator, coordinating travel for the Hub team and supporting meetings, workshops and events. She also provides administration for the AI4CI Hub’s Rapid Response Fund.
Prior to joining the Hub, Amy has worked at the University of Bristol for over 10 years in various research administration/coordination roles. Whilst working in the Bristol Medical School as a Senior Executive Assistant, Amy supported the Head of Surgical Research in setting-up a new research centre.
Dr Nirav Ajmeri
Deputy Hub Director, University of Bristol
Nirav is a Senior Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bristol’s School of Computer Science. His research interests are in socially intelligent agents and multi-agent systems, emphasising ethics and privacy in socio-technical systems of humans, organisations, and software agents. His research seeks to design ethical socio-technical systems and develop computational agents that support their users in decision making considering societal norms and human values and preferences.
Nirav’s work has appeared in top AI conferences (including AAMAS, IJCAI, AAAI, and ECAI) and computing journals (ACM TOSEM, ACM CSUR, IEEE Computer, and IEEE Internet Computing). He reviews for leading AI journals and conferences and speaks on AI, ethics, and socio-technical systems.
Dr Cangxiong Chen
ECR Lead, University of Bath
Cangxiong is a Research Associate at the Bath Institute for Mathematical Innovation. He works on the theoretical foundations of machine learning and on applying theoretical insights to build trustworthy, robust and generalisable machine learning systems. He has developed a framework for understanding how privacy of the training data in federated learning can be breached for image classification tasks. Recently, he has been developing algorithms for training deep learning models with differential privacy using methods from dynamical systems.
Cangxiong received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge and has work experience in data science in the industry.
Research theme leads
Environmental Intelligence
Prof Hywel Williams
Theme Lead: Environmental Intelligence, University of Exeter
Hywel is a computational scientist focused on challenges around sustainability and environmental change. He is a faculty member in Computer Science and affiliated to the Institute for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence and the Global Systems Institute, at University of Exeter.
Hywel’s research career has applied complex systems thinking and computational methods to problems in social sciences, environmental science, evolutionary ecology and artificial intelligence. His work has applied a range of methods including modelling, network analysis, natural language processing and machine learning.
Current research interests focus primarily on the application of artificial intelligence techniques to environmental problems.
Financial Stability
Prof John Cartlidge
Theme Lead: Financial Stability, University of Bristol
John joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol in August 2017. Previously, he spent two years as Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Nottingham’s campus in Ningbo, China.
John is a Fellow of the HEA, and visiting scholar at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He performs consultancy and advisory services for government and industry and has previously consulted for the UK Government and acted as expert witness for the high court and crown court in London in the area of automated trading technologies and financial systems. He has also acted as academic advisor on regulation technologies for the Financial Conduct Authority.
Prof Maggie Chen
Theme Lead: Financial Stability, Cardiff University
Jing Chen (Maggie) is a Professor in Financial Mathematics at Cardiff University. Her research provides a methodological foundation for social-technical issues in FinTech, risk modelling, financial market behaviour, and regulatory impacts. She holds adjunct/visiting professorship in several world-leading universities including Columbia, UCL etc.
She is the Co-I of EPSRC AI4CI Hub, leading the financial stability theme. She also leads another national program for Fintech funded by EPSRC, UKFin+ Network (£2.5m). She has been responsible for many research projects with a wide range of stake holders including Wales Data Nation Acceleration (WDNA), Turing Institute, (ONS), Royal Statistical Society (RSS), CRAFT, Fintech hubs, commercial companies, charities etc.
Healthcare Ecosystems
Dr Aisling Ann O’Kane
Theme Lead: Health Ecosystems, University of Bristol
Aisling’s research focuses on understanding how health and wellbeing technologies are used (and not used!) in the real world. She employs qualitative and participatory design approaches to studies of interactive technologies such devices, apps, websites and wearables, and is increasingly interested in how people interact with AI to support health, care and wellbeing.
Aisling works in the contexts of chronic condition self-management, shared and social care, women’s health, DIY healthcare, fitness and parenthood, has been working on understanding and designing for Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes technologies since 2011.
Dr Theresa Smith
Theme Lead: Health Ecosystems, University of Bath
Theresa is a Senior Lecturer in Statistics and Deputy Director of the SAMBa Centre for Doctoral Training at the University of Bath. She earned her PhD in Statistics from the University of Washington in 2014, followed by a postdoc at Lancaster University, before joining Bath’s Mathematical Sciences Department in 2016.
Theresa’s research develops statistical models for complex data like electronic health records where information is collected across many time points. She collaborates extensively with clinicians and health professionals to create data-driven approaches aimed at improving population health, especially for non-infectious diseases such as arthritis and depression.
Human-Centered Design
Prof Laura G. E. Smith
Theme Lead: Human-Centered Design, University of Bath
Laura is Professor of Psychology at the University of Bath and co-Director of the Institute for Digital Security and Behaviour (www.idsb.ac.uk). She received her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Exeter (2008), and held academic positions at the University of Queensland, Australia, from 2008-2011, before joining the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath in 2011.
Laura was Chief Editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology from 2020-2022. Her research highlights how human psychology and behaviour interact with the affordances of digital technologies – and how this can produce opportunities, but also creates vulnerabilities and risks.
Prof Philip Morgan
Theme Lead: Human-Centered Design, Cardiff University
Phil is a Professor of Human Factors and Cognitive Science at Cardiff University. He is Director of Human Factors, DoR for the Centre for AI, Robotics and Human-Machine Systems, and Transport Lead within the Digital Transformation Institute. Phil Directs the Airbus-Cardiff University Centre of Excellence in Human-Centric Cyber Security and Co-Leads an Airbus-Cardiff University Partnership.
Phil received his PhD in Cognitive Science from Cardiff University (2005). He has published widely on sociotechnical aspects of AI, automation, cyber security, transport, and robotics, as well as adaptive cognition and distraction and interruption effects. Phil and collaborators have won around £40m funding for more than 50 projects.
Infrastructure and Governance
Prof Joan Condell
Theme Lead: Infrastructure and Governance, Ulster University
Joan leads the Human Centred Computing team at Ulster University, Derry/LDerry within the Computing, Engineering and Intelligent Systems School. She created the Northern Ireland technology testbed eCareWell testing Northern Irelands companies’ products and services directly within our regional communities – high TRL technologies to support mental, physical and environmental health.
Joan has a long-established record of successful grant funding and high-impact-factor journal publications for Ulster University (over 250 publications and 56M+ of funding). She has led over 24 EU projects in the last 6-8 years. She thrives when building innovative products alongside companies for community health, with stakeholders from a range of different sectors.
Prof Michaela Black
Theme Lead: Infrastructure and Governance, Ulster University
Michaela is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Ulster University, with over 70 publications and has secured more than £30M funding. She is principal investigator of AI Collaboration Centre (AICC £16.3M funding) to increasing business AI adoption, awareness and skills
Michaela is academic lead for:
- City Deal Cognitive Analytics & Digital Robotics Innovation Centre (CADRIC £39M funding), driving multi-disciplinary innovation and benefits of leading-edge research in data-driven disciplines including bio-inspired AI
- LUCIA: Understanding Lung Cancer related risk factors and their Impact (£12.5M funding, 2024-2028) to improve lung cancer outcomes with knowledge of risk factors
Michaela has also coordinated EU-funded MIDAS (Meaningful Integration of Data, Analytics and Services) 2016-2020, securing €4.5m to deliver Big Data platforms with AI solutions connecting health-data, to analysis data and enhance policies including: mental-health, obesity, diabetes and looked-after-children, ensuring Ethics & Governance.
Pandemic Resilience
Smart City Design
Prof Adam Dennett
Theme Lead: Smart Cities, University College London
Adam is Professor of Urban Analytics at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), at University College London. He is a geographer with broad research interests which range from migration and mobilities, housing, gentrification, urban modelling, and beer geographies These are all tied together with a fondness for data, visualisation and computational methods, put to use in applied settings.
Positions held
- Elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences
- Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society
- Head of Department in CASA between 2018-2023
- Editor-in-Chief of Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy between 2017 and 2023
In 2020 Adam was awarded, with Westminster Council, the Cabinet Office Geospatial Commission Geography in Government Award for Excellence in Local Government for pioneering applied urban analytics work through their Urban Lab.
Prof Alison Heppenstall
Theme Lead: Smart Cities, University of Glasgow
Alison is a Professor of Geocomputation at the University of Glasgow. Alison is interested in a broad array of AI and machine learning approaches for simulating individual mobility and behaviours within cities.
Positions held
- Alan Turing Fellow
- Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society
- Member of the Joint BioSecurity Council
- Editor of Computers, Environment and Urban Systems
In 2022 Alison was awarded the International Society of Computational Economics prize for “outstanding contribution in computational social simulation” by the Italian Research Council.
Research theme team members
Environmental Intelligence
Dr Hailun Xie
Research Associate: Environmental Intelligence, University of Exeter
Hailun is a research fellow in the Department of Computer Science at University of Exeter. He has an interdisciplinary background in Machine Learning and Engineering.
Hailun has extensive experiences in Climate Risk Assessment, Offshore Renewable Energy, as well as Built Environment. He created future weather files which are used by the whole building industry for future-proofing building design and regulatory compliance in the UK. His research focuses on using AI and modelling to address the pressing challenges of climate change.
Mahdis (Motahareh) Tourian
Mahdis is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Doctoral Training at the University of Exeter, specializing in data science and AI applications for environmental challenges. She possesses strong expertise in topic modelling, data visualization, and programming in R and Python. Her academic background is complimented by experience in data analysis, business management, and AI methodologies.
Mahdis is deeply committed to leveraging data science tools to develop innovative solutions for complex environmental issues, with a focus on translating analytical insights into actionable strategies. She aims to bridge the gap between advanced data techniques and real-world applications, contributing to sustainable development.
Bid Oscar Hountondji
Oscar is a PhD student at the University of Exeter. With a background in Applied Statistics and a Master’s in Collective Intelligence (CI) from the University Mohammed VI Polytechnic (UM6P Morocco), Oscar specializes in the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and CI. Committed to developing ethical, public-trusted AI, he leverages CI methodologies to enhance group decision-making with AI integration. His previous projects involved Fuzzy Logic, NLP and LLMs.
Oscar also worked for two years as a Health Statistician and Data Scientist at the Benin Ministry of Health.
Oscar’s research with AI4CI focuses on smart AI agents:LLMs, RAG, and user interfaces, to ensure accurate, reliable environmental data presentation, emphasizing responsible innovation and public engagement for environmental impact.
Zdenek Plesek (They/them)
Zdenek is a PhD student at University of Exeter. They have a master’s degree in Computer Science from University of Exeter; their previous projects focused on AI robustness and explainable AI. Their current research follows on this theme and has a working title “Smart Agents for Biodiversity / Conservation”.
Financial Stability
Dr Eva Christodoulaki (She/her)
Research Associate: Financial Stability, University of Bristol
Eva is a postdoctoral researcher with interests in evolutionary algorithms, optimisation, finance, mathematical analysis, and regulatory frameworks. Her PhD research applied Genetic Programming to algorithmic trading, leveraging fundamental, sentiment, and technical analysis to enhance market insights.
Eva is focused on using quantitative methods to advance algorithmic solutions for financial stability, including models that incorporate market and environmental sustainability. She brings technical knowledge and analytical insights to research that connects finance with regulatory needs, supporting a resilient and sustainable financial sector.
Healthcare Ecosytems
Adeeb Mahmood
Adeeb is completing a PhD in applied statistics and mathematics at Bath University. Their research is focused on gaining information from Electronic Healthcare Records, with a focus on mental health within the UK.
Within their PhD Adeeb has two goals. The first is to gain a greater understanding as to which patient will prematurely end therapy. The second is to predict a patient’s depression and anxiety over time, to aid in a clinicians work with a patient.
Annie Russell
Annie is a PhD student and a member of the SAMBa Centre for Doctoral Training at the University of Bath. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Mathematical Sciences at the University of Limerick in 2023 and soon after joined SAMBa.
Annie’s mathematical interests lie in statistics, particularly with applications in health science. Her PhD project is centred on causal inference within psoriatic arthritis, where she explores how dynamic treatment strategies and drug-switching impact patient outcomes.
By using data-driven causal methods, Annie seeks to provide insights into more effective treatment strategies, offering fresh perspectives on managing chronic conditions such as psoriatic arthritis.
Dr Ensor Palacios
Research Associate: Health Ecosystems, University of Bath
Ensor is a Postdoc at the University of Bath working on predictions of various health-related outcomes. For his work, he uses statistics and machine learning, including time-to-event, time-series and cluster analysis, as well as application of Bayesian statistics and causal inference.
Previously, Ensor worked in Computational Neuroscience at UCL, completed his PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Bristol, and then worked on environmental epidemiology at the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (EIU) in Bristol.
Sam James
Research Associate: Health Ecosystems, University of Bristol
Sam James is a PhD candidate, with a background in mathematical modelling, researching the technology used for managing Type 1 Diabetes (T1D). His research focuses on exploring the potential role of smartwatches in T1D management.
Sam approaches this from both human-computer interaction and data science perspectives, conducting a longitudinal study with young adults with T1D. This study has produced a rich dataset that features both qualitative and quantitative data on smartwatch use for T1D.
Sam is dedicated to ensuring that user perspectives are central in the development of technology for chronic conditions, adapting it to meet the unpredictability of everyday life.
Human-Centred Design
Dr Sachini Weerawardhana
Research Associate: Human-Centered Design, University of Bath
Sachini is an early career researcher in the Department of Psychology, University of Bath. She obtained her PhD in computer science from Colorado State University, USA, specialising in automated planning and interventions.
Before joining the AI4CI Hub, Sachini was a postdoctoral researcher in the UKRI-funded Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) Hub. She was the principal investigator in TAS Hub projects: Leap of Faith and AI in Aesthetics Practice.
Sachini’s research interests are in human-machine interactions, trust and Responsible Research and Innovation. In the AI4CI Hub, Sachini is working on the Human-Centered Design theme, focusing on building smart agents for effective human engagement relevant to acceptance, adoption and continued use of collective intelligent systems.
Dr Thom Griffith
Thom currently works as a Research Associate on the AI4CI project, focusing on human-centred design for integrating AI into collaborative intelligence systems.
Thom holds a PhD in Complexity Science from the University of Bristol and has previously worked as a Senior Research Associate in the Dexterous Robotics group at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. His experience includes machine learning for robotic perception and reinforcement-learning for decision-making.
Jessica Matthews
Jessica an undergraduate placement student in Cardiff University School of Psychology, aiding the Human-Centered Design domain. Her main role is researching case studies of smart agents to find techniques and measures which can be used in the future to improve the design and human perception, interaction and continued use of smart agents.
In the future Jessica aims to further research computer-human interactions from a human factors’ perspective, breaking down the causes of people’s reluctance to use AI and consider the implications of making an AI system that cannot be fully transparent.
Pandemic Resilience
Dr Robert Challen
Research Fellow: Pandemic Resilience, University of Bristol
Robert is a postdoctoral research fellow in infectious disease at the University of Bristol, UK. His previous research includes the epidemiology, transmissibility and severity of SARS-CoV-2 variants and pneumococcal serotypes.
Robert was jointly awarded the Weldon Memorial Prize for his role advising the UK government during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Smart City Design
Adham Enaya
Research Associate: Smart Cities, University College London
Adham is a software engineer currently pursuing PhD research in urban modelling at UCL. He is interested in designing solutions for ‘democratizing’ digital tools and making them accessible. At UNRWA, he led the development of no-code platforms that enable non-technical users to create custom digital solutions.
Adham’s current research focuses on developing transferable urban models to help cities with limited data plan effective interventions by applying insights from similar cities. Just as his prior work on no-code platforms broadened access to software development, his research aims to enable more cities, regardless of data resources or expertise, to envision new sustainable urban planning.
Dr Beatrice Taylor
Research Associate: Smart Cities, University College London
Beatrice is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UCL in the AI4CI Smart Cities group. As part of this project, she will be exploring the growth and development of the built environment in London using data extracted from planning applications.
Beatrice is particularly interested in mathematical and probabilistic machine learning methods, and how these can be applied to various real-world problems. Her PhD is from the Computer Science department at UCL, where she explored the use of machine learning models for understanding disease progression in dementia, prior to which her background is in Maths.
Dr Yahya Gamalaldin
Research Associate: Smart Cities, University of Glasgow
Yahya is a Research Associate (RA) in the AI4CI hub: Smart Cities Theme. Prior to this, he was an RA in University College London, King’s College London and the Urban Big Data Centre where his research focused on developing geospatial urban simulations, particularly Agent Based Models (ABMs). His PhD in Architecture from the University of Manchester with a focus on economic decision-making theories in ABMs.
Yahya’s recent work includes: land valuation ABMs in the context of optimising road network for flood resilience; and financial housing market ABMs.
Yahya Gamal is particularly interested in using machine learning and AI methods to inform behaviours of agents in ABMs and to facilitate the user interaction with complex urban simulations.
