I spend most of my time organising workshops, making podcasts, designing educational programs, and meeting PhD students these days, so most of my research is in fact driven by my fantastic students. I see my supervisory role as that of a guide — someone whose job it is to help them find their way through the sometimes winding landscape that describes most research projects (and careers).
There are some themes to my current work, though. I have an interest in creating trustworthy autonomous systems that remain trustworthy even when deployed far from where they were originally created. This can mean many things, and is always contextual. What matters for a voice assistant might not matter quite so much for an autonomous vehicle, but there are still commonalities in the way we tease out what matters, and why, and what that means for what we create.
I also have a fascination for how humans work with technological systems to achieve their goals, probably stemming from my time in nuclear physics. All my work there was made possible by fairly complex technological systems, and I spent a lot of time thinking about how the design of those systems shaped what we thought we knew. For more on this, check out some of the work colleagues and I have done (and are still doing) for the Algorithmic Futures Policy Lab — all the videos for our past workshop are available through our website.
I think transdisciplinary education (which a colleague sometimes describes as a cake baked with many knowledges) is becoming increasingly essential in this complex world we live in, so I spend a lot of time thinking about what this looks like and how to do it well. This builds on my experience creating the hands-on half of the School of Cybernetics Masters of Applied Cybernetics with John Debs way back in 2019. I love creating educational programs that help students develop STEM skills while engaging directly in questions about ethics and social responsibility.
And finally, I still have some publications from my life in nuclear physics trickling through the long pipeline that is nuclear physics research. It’s a fun chance to reconnect with colleagues and keep up with what’s going on in a landscape I am starting to engage with through other fun initiatives. More on that at a later date…
If any of this sounds interesting to you, visit my about page and send me a message. I am not taking on new PhD students right now, but I’m always looking for collaborators.