Main Auditorium Sessions

Community Panel

Chaired by: Dawn Greenberg
Head of AI and Digital – Arts and Humanities Research Council

Dawn is head of the AI and Digital team at the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. The AI&D team connect and convene AHRC’s AI and digital research, lead AHRC’s strategic approach to responsible AI, while championing arts and humanities contributions to AI and digital research within UKRI and beyond.​

Panellists:

Dr Christopher Burr
Principal Research Scientist and Theme Lead for Trustworthy and Assured AI

Chris is a Principal Research Scientist at the Alan Turing Institute, where he leads the institute’s Trustworthy and Assured AI theme. His work focuses on the assurance of AI systems — exploring the evidence, methods, and tools that let teams and organisations demonstrate that an AI system is safe, secure, explainable, fair, and fit for the decisions it informs. He is currently principal investigator for the DARTER project (Digital twin assurance via runtime trust and evidence reporting), which is funded by the UK Digital Twin Centre and Digital Catapult.

Dr Natasha McCarthy
Associate Director for Policy at the Royal Academy of Engineering

Natasha leads the National Engineering Policy Centre, which applies engineering expertise from across the UK’s professional engineering organisations to policy challenges of national and global importance.

Prof David Leslie
Director of Ethics and Responsible Innovation Research at The Alan Turing Institute and Professor of Ethics, Technology and Society at Queen Mary University of London

Dr Nayha Sethi
Senior Lecturer at the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh and Lead for Community at BRAID UK

Nayha’s background is in law and ethics and her research focusses on developing responsible approaches to the regulation of technologies informed by stakeholder perspectives. She is a co-I on the AHRC funded BRAID project where she leads on community.

Octavia Field Reid
 Associate Director (Public Participation & Research Practice) at the Ada Lovelace Institute

AI & Entrepreneurship Session

Edinburgh Innovations
Lizzie Withington, Director of Venture Creation

Lizzie Withington is Director of Venture Creation at Edinburgh Innovations, bringing entrepreneurial, academic and corporate experience to helping research become impactful ventures. A founder, educator and innovation leader, she is passionate about fostering entrepreneurship and building the next generation of high-growth spinouts and start-ups.

Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub
Emma Loedel, Senior Enterprise Manager - Scotland

Emma is Senior Enterprise Manager at the Royal Academy of Engineering, supporting founders to build and scale innovative ventures. Originally trained as a Biomedical Engineer, her entrepreneurial journey began while working with a prosthetics clinic in Colombia. Drawing on experience across startups, scaleups, and ecosystem support organisations in Scotland, she helps ambitious founders navigate the journey from idea to impact.

Holistic AI
Emre Kazim, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Holistic AI

Emre is the co-founder and co-CEO of Holistic AI, creators of the industry-leading AI Governance Platform that empowers enterprises to adopt and scale AI with confidence. He has a tenured background in AI ethics and governance, publishing peer-reviewed articles and working with state and industry leaders. Emre is also involved with Forbes, NIST and OECD, and holds an MSci in Chemistry, MA, and Ph.D. in Philosophy from UCL and King’s College London.

Future Worlds
Ben Clark, Director of Future Worlds

Ben helps the next generation of startup founders change the world with their ideas as Director of Future Worlds, the university startup accelerator. He's a serial startup leader across bootstrapped, angel and VC funded startups in the UK, US and Africa leading to 2x successful exits and 2x profitable companies. He is also Associate Dean for Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise within the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Southampton 

UK AI Research Labs

Chaired by: Lisa Coles
Deputy Director for AI , UK Research & Innovation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council 

Lisa is Deputy Director for AI and Data at EPSRC, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), where she leads strategic programmes and partnerships that support the UK’s engineering and physical sciences research landscape. She has previously held roles across the council including Head of AI and Robotics and Joint Head of Circular Economy. Before joining EPSRC Lisa did a PhD in Engineering at the University of Bath.

Panellists:

Prof. David Barber (GenAI Hub Director)
Science of Fundamental AI Research (SOFAIR) Lab

David is Professor of Machine Learning at Univesity College London and Director of the Science of Fundamental AI Research Lab (SOFAIR) that aims to create new Frontier Model capabilities. He has BA in Mathematics from Cambridge University and a PhD in theoretical physics from Edinburgh University.

British Open-ended Learning and Discovery (BOLD) Lab