New Deputy Vice Principals Research from the School of Informatics

Two senior academics from the School of Informatics have been appointed new deputy Vice Principals Research.

Jane Hillston, Head of School of Informatics has been appointed new Deputy Vice Principal Research on a two-year secondment starting in September. Michael Rovatsos, Director of the Bayes Centre has also been appointed DVPR and he will focus specifically on strengthening the University's position as a world leader in AI research. They will both continue in their current roles.   

I believe that research provides us with the opportunity to change the world for the better, and so I am very much looking forward to this new role, which will give me a greater perspective on research, and its potential impact, across the whole university.  Informatics and data-driven innovation is at the core of much of current activity so I hope that my two roles will be highly complementary.

Beyond being a research area that our School and its predecessors at Edinburgh have shaped over the last 60 years, AI is now set to become a mainstream digital technology that will profoundly transform other disciplines, the economy, and society. I want to focus on three priorities to support the institution in accessing these - raising the visibility and increasing the capacity of our core AI research across Informatics; fostering increased adoption and application of AI techniques in other disciplines; and becoming world leaders in the responsible use of AI. Much of this work will build on the research excellence of the School, and the cross-School collaborations we've established through Bayes. I am looking forward to work on creating new opportunities for increasing the capability and impact of our collective work.