Luciana Blaha

Business Management,Technology Adoption, Intelligent Automation, Posthumanism, Organizational Behaviour, Operations Management, Leadership

Luciana leads the Intelligent Automation Systems (IAS) Lab at Heriot-Watt University and is a part of the Human Factors Team in Transit, the UK's Digital Twin for Transport Decarbonisation Hub. She has worked in the public, private and third sector for 12 years before moving to academia. She has her PhD in Business Management from the University of Aberdeen under the Elphinstone Scholarship and was a British Federation of Women Graduates bursary holder in 2021. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Chartered Management Institute (CMI) member, and was awarded the SOSS Early-Career Researcher of the Year Award in 2023.

Currently, her work focuses on organizational behaviour and Intelligent Automation systems. Her research combines findings from science and technology studies, business management and computing science, and has contributed to projects on public sector AI adoption and procurement, robotics adoption and strategy-building, digitalisation maturity projects, and digital twin modelling, use and impact. 

Current projects under supervision:

• Intelligent automation for Manufacturing in Ghana and the UK, Randy Adjepong (PhD, SOSS Scholarship).
• The effect of adopting emerging technologies by Jordanian health insurance companies on their financial performance, San'a Mohammad Al-Sharaideh (DBA)
• Integrating ChatGPT4o in international Human Resources departments: Ethical implications, future skillset and the evolution of HR roles through Generative AI, Anke Ishorst (DBA)
• EPSRC Summer Internships
• National Robotarium and Edinburgh Business School Accelerated Knowledge Transfer projects (AKT)

Engineering Management MSc Programme Design Director

July 2025 - Present

Intelligent Automation Systems Lab Lead

February 2023 - Present

Graduate Apprenticeships in Business Management Year 1 Coordinator

 Aug 2021 - Jan 2025

2025 and ongoing:

TransiT - Digital twinning research hub for the decarbonisation and integration of transport systems in the UK (EPSRC)

Lighthouse Project - SME Manufacturing Audit Service (Smart Manufacturing Data Hub/Innovate UK)

Local authority AI readiness review in partnership with GoLLM, the Association for Public Sector Excellence and the Society for Innovation, Networking and Modernisation UK (Interface Scotland)

2024:

Thermo Fisher/National Robotarium Accelerated Knowledge Transfer Partnership (Innovate UK)

Extend Robotics Scotland Feasiblity Study - Scotland Inward Investment Fund (Interface Scotland)