I'm interested in using machine learning to extract meaning and value from data and presenting this to users in a way that promotes understanding and trust. This not only means being transparent regarding the provenance of the data, but also making the reasoning accessible and understandable to users who may be domain experts but have less knowledge of machine learning algorithms. Without trust there is little point to performing the inferencing as users and stakeholders will not act on the results no matter how interesting they might first appear. 

My lab uses a mixture of machine learning, psychophysics, data visualisation and ethical crowd-sourcing. Current projects range from  providing strategic thematic summaries of large project portfolio and providing smart support for research landscaping and strategy development meetings of up to one hundred stakeholders.

We have also developed the Well Sorted tool for creating and structuring research landscape and other brainstorming meetings ain an amicable way.

I graduated with a first in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Glasgow (1979) and PhD in image processing from Heriot-Watt (1994). For a while after graduation I was a software engineer in the computer industry before taking up a post initially in Heriot-Watt’s Electrical Engineering Department.

I have successfully supervised over twenty-five phds, published over 150 peer-reviewed papers, have chaired a number of leading international conferences and workshops and attracted has multi-million pound EU and national funding.  I been a member of a considerable number of EPSRC, ESRC, Data Lab and InnovateUK prioritisation panels and have been involved in strategy development for ESRC, EPSRC and InnovateUK (for instance I have been a member of thje EPSRC ICT SAT and DE’s PAB).