Our #DDIdiscussions from May 19th discussed the role of Scottish Universities in the development of AI. Scotland's recently released AI strategy, the exciting development of the National Robotarium and what sectors of the Scottish economy have untapped potential for AI implementation. - It's a discussion not to be missed! #DDIdiscussions

Panel information

Michael Rovatos
Michael is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the School of Informatics, Deputy Vice Principal of Research, and Director of the Bayes Centre at the University of Edinburgh. His academic research interests are mainly in multiagent systems, i.e. systems where artificial or human agents collaborate or compete with each other. In recent years, much of his work has focused on ethical aspects of AI, primarily through the development of methods for designing fair and diversity-aware AI algorithms and architectures that adapt to the values of human users. Michael has authored around 100 scientific articles on various topics in AI, and has been involved in research projects that have received around £17 million of external funding.

Steph Wright
Steph is a data science enthusiast with specific experience of the healthcare domain. She has been extensively involved in developing and building collaborations across organisations as well as experience in project and programme management. Steph has a diverse background ranging from astrophysics to genomics in academia and film & TV to dance in the arts and the third sector. Recently Steph led on Data Lab’s efforts in support of the Scottish Government in developing Scotland’s AI Strategy. Going forward, she is working with Gillian Docherty, CEO of the Data Lab and the newly announced Scottish AI Alliance to deliver the strategy’s vision for Scotland

Helen Hastie
Helen Hastie is a Professor of Computer Science at Heriot-Watt University, Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Robotic and Autonomous Systems at the Edinburgh Centre of Robotics, and Academic Lead for the National Robotarium, opening in 2022 in Edinburgh. She is currently PI on the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node on Trust and HRI theme lead for the EPSRC ORCA Hub, and recently held a Royal Academy of Engineering/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship. Her field of research is multimodal and spoken dialogue systems, human-robot interaction and trustworthy autonomous systems. She was Co-ordinator of the EU project PARLANCE, has over 100 publications and has held positions on many scientific committees and advisory boards, including recently for the Scottish Government AI Strategy. Finally, she is a founding member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy of Scotland. She holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in prosody for speech recognition.

Roy Donaldson
Roy Donaldson is a Solutions Architect working for Cisco UK&I in their Office of the CTO. The team is responsible for bringing new and emerging technologies to the UK and working with our customers on successfully deploying leading edge technology. Current areas of interest in the team are 5 G / Wifi 6 and Openroaming, SmartBuildings and the circular economy. We also look after Cisco UK’s funding of research to universities and InnovateUK / DCMS funded collaboration technologies.

Delivered by the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University for the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal.

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