Network

Themis holds the Regius Chair of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh and is Director of the Centre for Electronics Frontiers. His work focuses on developing metal-oxide Resistive Random Access Memory technologies and related applications and is leading an interdisciplinary team comprising 30 researchers with expertise ranging from materials process development to electron devices and circuits and systems for embedded applications. He holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies and a Royal Society Industry Fellowship. He is an Adjunct Professor at UTS Australia, visiting Professor at the Department of Microelectronics and Nanoelectronics at Tsinghua University, and Honorary Fellow at Imperial College London. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the British Computer Society, the IET and the Institute of Physics and is also Senior Member of the IEEE. He served as the Director of the Lloyds Register Foundation International Consortium for Nanotechnology and Co-Director of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Machine Intelligence for Nano- Electronic Devices and Systems (MINDS). In 2015, he established ArC Instruments Ltd that delivers high-performance testing infrastructure for automating characterisation of novel nanodevices in over 21 countries and in 2019 he founded SoneT.ai that is building new power-efficient AI hardware solutions. His contributions in memristive technologies and applications have brought this emerging technology one step closer to the electronics industry for which he was recognised as a 2021 Blavatnik Award UK Honoree in Physical Sciences and Engineering.

Wendy Hall, DBE, FRS, FREng is Regius Professor of Computer Science, Associate Vice President (International Engagement) and Director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton. She was Dean of the Faculty of Physical Science and Engineering from 2010 to 2014 and Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) from 2002 to 2007.

One of the first computer scientists to undertake serious research in multimedia and hypermedia, she has been at its forefront ever since. The influence of her work has been significant in many areas including digital libraries, the development of the Internet, and the emerging research discipline of Web Science. Her current research includes exploring interfaces between the social and physical sciences through the development of Web Science and the study of online systems through a sociotechnical lens. She is Managing Director of the Web Science Trust.

She became a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the 2009 UK New Year's Honours list and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in the same year. She was elected President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in July 2008, and was the first person from outside North America to hold this position. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the ACM. She is a distinguished fellow of the British Computer Society.

She was Senior Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2005-8), a member of the UK Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology (2004-10), and a founder member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council (2005-10). She was President of the British Computer Society (2003-4), an EPSRC Senior Research Fellow (1996-2002) and a member of the EPSRC Council (1997-2002).

In 2017, Dame Wendy was co-Chair of the UK government’s AI Review, which was published in October 2017. She became a member of the AI Council and was appointed the first UK AI Skills Champion in 2018. She was Chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute (2020-2023). She is currently the co-Chair of the ACM Publications Board and Editor-in-Chief of Royal Society Open Science. She is an advisor to the UK government and many other governments and companies around the world and in 2023 was appointed to the United Nations high-level advisory body on artificial intelligence. Her latest book, Four Internets, cowritten with Kieron O’Hara and published by OUP in 2021, is about data, geopolitics and the governance of cyberspace.

Through her leadership roles on national and international bodies, she has shattered many glass ceilings, readily deploying her position on numerous national and international bodies
to promote the role of women in SET and acting as an important role model for others.

Publications:

Wendy Hall: Dame Wendy Hall | University of Southampton

Jacqueline Cole is the Royal Academy of Engineering Professor of Materials Physics, University of Cambridge. Her research and leadership are interdisciplinary, international, innovative, and collaborative, as recognized by the: Warren Diffraction Physics Award 2021; Royal Society Clifford Paterson Medal, 2020; 1851 Royal Commission Design Fellowship (2015-8), Fulbright Award (2013-4); Vice Chancellor’s Research Chair, University of New Brunswick, Canada (2008-13); Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2001-11); Royal Society of Chemistry SAC Silver Medal (2009); Brian Mercer Feasibility Award (2007); 18th Franco-British Science prize (2006); Senior and Junior Research Fellowships (1999-2009), St Catharine’s College, Cambridge; British Crystallographic Association Chemical Crystallography Prize (2000); London Business School (LBS) Diversity in Leadership Award (2021); LBS Social Good Award (2023).

Subramanian Ramamoorthy is a Professor of Robot Learning and Autonomy in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, where he is also Director of the Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour and Director of the UKRI AI CDT in Dependable and Deployable AI for Robotics.

His research explores machine learning and its uses in robotics and autonomous systems. This includes physics informed machine learning and the problem of trustworthiness in AI. This work has attracted funding from a variety of sources including UKRI, EU, DARPA, DSTL and the Royal Academy of Engineering, and been recognised with best paper awards at international conferences including ICRA, IROS, CoRL, ICDL and EACL.

In addition to his academic role, he has been involved in Five AI, a UK based technology company developing autonomous vehicles technology, as Vice President - Prediction and Planning (2017 - 2020) and Scientific Advisor (2021-23). Five AI was acquired by Bosch GmbH in 2022.

Bipin Rajendran is a Professor of Intelligent Computing Systems in the Department of Engineering, King's College London, where he directs the King's Laboratory for Intelligent Computing. He also co-leads the Centre for Intelligent Information Processing (CIIPS).

He received a B. Tech degree from I.I.T. Kharagpur in 2000, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2003 and 2006, respectively. He was a Master Inventor and Research Staff Member at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in New York during 2006-'12 and has held faculty positions in India and the US.

His research focuses on building algorithms, devices, and systems for intelligent computing systems. He has co-authored over 95 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences, one monograph, one edited book, and 59 issued U.S. patents. He is a recipient of the IBM Faculty Award (2019), IBM Research Division Award (2012), and IBM Technical Accomplishment Award (2010). He was elected a senior member of the US National Academy of Inventors in 2019.

His research has been supported by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the European Commission, the European Space Agency, Semiconductor Research Corporation as well as Intel, IBM, and Cisco. In 2022, he was awarded an Open Fellowship of the EPSRC.

Merlyne De Souza received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1994.  She was appointed Professor of Electronics and Materials at De Montfort University in 2003 and Professor of Microelectronics at the University of Sheffield in 2007. She has been a technical committee member of the IEDM (2012-2017) and IRPS (2003-2013). She has co-authored over 200 articles to date and is a distinguished lecturer and VP of future emerging technologies of the IEEE Electron Device Society.

Christos-Savvas Bouganis is a Professor of Intelligent Digital Systems in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, U.K. He is leading the iDSL group at Imperial College (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/idsl), with a focus on the theory and practice of reconfigurable computing and design automation, mainly targeting the domains of Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Robotics. 

Michael O'Boyle is a professor of Computing and Director of the Institute for Computing Systems Architecture at the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics. O'Boyle's research interests include adaptive compilation, machine learning based optimization, auto-parallelising compilers and heterogeneous GPGPU multi-core platforms. He is project leader of the MilePost gcc project and founding member of the European Network of Excellence on High Performance and Embedded Architecture and Compilation.

Professor Máire O’Neill (FREng, FIAE, MRIA) has a strong international reputation for her research in hardware security and applied cryptography. She is the Director of the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT: www.qub.ac.uk/ecit) and Principal Investigator of the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT: www.csit.qub.ac.uk ), QUB, and is currently Director of the £5M UK Research Institute in Secure Hardware and Embedded Systems (RISE: www.ukrise.org). She previously held a UK EPSRC Leadership Fellowship (2008-2014) and was a former holder of a UK Royal Academy of Engineering research fellowship (2003-2008). She also led the €3.8M EU H2020 SAFEcrypto (Secure architectures for Future Emerging Cryptography) project (2014-2018). She has received numerous awards which include a Blavatnik Engineering and Physical Sciences medal, 2019, a Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal, 2014 and British Female Inventor of the Year 2007. She has authored two research books and over 150 peer-reviewed conference and journal publications. She is Associate Editor for IEEE TC and IEEE TETC and secretary of the IEEE Circuits and Systems for Communications Technical committee. She is a member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Fellow of the Irish Academy of Engineering, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in September 2019. 

Research activities are focused on specification, verification and analysis techniques which allow designers to define a design and to verify/explore its behaviour in terms of functional correctness, performance, power consumption and energy efficiency. My work includes both formal methods and state-of-the-art simulation/test-based approaches. I have a strong background in computational logic, especially formal verification, declarative programming, abstract machines, compilation techniques and meta programming.

Vihar is a Professor of Nanoelectronics and the leader of the DeepNano Group at the University of Glasgow. He holds an EPSRC UKRI Innovation Fellowship and serves as a Visiting Professor at TU Vienna. Previously, from 2015 until January 2024, he co-led the Device Modelling Group. The DeepNano Group, established on January 1, 2024, aims to advance research in modelling and simulations of electronic devices. The group integrates analytical, numerical, machine learning, and artificial intelligence methods in its research approach.

The research activities of the DeepNano Group are centred on modelling and simulating nanoscale devices for applications in advanced optoelectronics, biosensors, and quantum technologies. Collaborations include leading experimental groups at IBM, STMicroelectronics, IMEC, Synopsys, and Synopsys QuantumATK. Vihar's group collaborates with academic institutions in the UK, USA, China, South Korea, India, Japan, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Germany, and Bulgaria. They actively promote open science practices and welcome collaborations with interested parties worldwide.

Professor Rishad Shafik (RS) is a Personal Chair in Microelectronic Systems Design and EEE Research Director at Newcastle University. He is an international leader of hardware/software co-design applied in machine learning systems. He has published in excess of 200 research articles in major peer-reviewed IEEE/ACM journals and conferences, with 4 of them winning the best paper awards and 4 others nominated for best paper awards. His research contributed to circa £29m research grants as PI/CoI funded by EPSRC, Research Council of Norway (RCN) and Industries. Most recently, he is the Newcastle PI of EPSRC £6.5 SONNETS Programme and Newcastle PI of RCN funded £1.13m SecurioTM and £1m CareLearner projects. Underpinned on two recent patents and £500k accelerator grants from EPSRC and Research England, he has recently founded Literal Labs AI (a Newcastle University spinout specialising in ML co-processor architectures and embedded solutions).  

Dr. Anastasia Eleftheriou brings expertise across research, academia, entrepreneurship, and management in the field of Computer Science. She holds a PhD in Complex Systems Simulation from the University of Southampton, focusing on using simulations to tackle public health challenges. She also holds a First Class Honours Bachelor's degree in Computing from Imperial College London. Currently, Dr. Eleftheriou serves as the AI Hub Manager for the APRIL AI Hub at the University of Edinburgh. 

Since January 2019, Dr. Eleftheriou has directed operations at Technologos Research and Innovation Services, where she has managed 12 national and international projects. Her career includes pivotal roles such as Artificial Intelligence Research Developer at Mandara Capital, Software Engineer at Man Investments and Project Manager at Innovation Actions Ltd. She has also supervised Software Engineering projects at the University of Southampton and taught Computer Science at Ashbourne Independent Sixth Form College, the American Academy Larnaca, and the American University of Cyprus.

Dr. Eleftheriou has contributed extensively to journals and conferences on topics including computer simulations, public health interventions, and educational innovations. Her contributions have earned recognition, including the Bebras Challenge Award in March 2023 and selection for the European Female Founders Forum by European Commissioner Mariya Gabriel in May 2022. Additionally, she has secured research funding from the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation, UKRI, and the European Commission, and has been recognised with academic honors from Imperial College London.

Following her PhD in Physics, Caterina joined the University of Southampton, diving into research and entrepreneurship in optoelectronics and life sciences.
 
With over 20 years of experience, she has co-founded a company and utilised her scientific expertise to transition technologies from R&D to global markets, securing regulatory approvals and launching successful products.
 
Caterina has held various roles, from Chief Scientific Officer to Head of Commercial, in spin-offs, SMEs, and large corporations. Her responsibilities have encompassed research, product development, and strategic market positioning. She excels in leading cross-functional teams and building strong stakeholder relationships to achieve targets and drive revenue.
 
Caterina is now joining the APRIL Hub at the University of Edinburgh's College of Science and Engineering as a Business Development Executive.

Dara-Emma is the Administrator of the APRIL AI Hub, an innovative centre dedicated to transforming the electronics industry through advanced AI integration. The Hub for AI for Productive Research & Innovation in eLectronics (APRIL) takes a comprehensive approach to transforming the electronics industry through AI integration, bringing together a UK-wide consortium of universities, industry and government bodies. Dara-Emma provides expert administrative support, manages hub activities, orchestrates high-impact events, and fosters strategic collaborations between academia and industry leaders. She has over 10 years of experience in project delivery, administration, data management, and stakeholder engagement for charities, community organisations, private enterprises, and financial institutions. Dara-Emma spearheaded successful database projects across Glasgow, led global web development initiatives and promoted diversity and inclusion in tech. Her data-driven problem-solving, collaborative mindset and exceptional customer service drive project success.

Megan has worked in communications and events in the charity and education sectors for the past four years. She has a BA (Joint Hons) Chinese and Film Studies from the University of Hull, and MA Film from Screen Academy Scotland. An avid photographer, she is passionate about collaborative storytelling and public engagement.

Molly Smith is an Engagement Officer for the APRIL Hub who is responsible for bringing together the Hub community through organising and delivering a variety of events with partners and stakeholders and leading on outreach for the Hub. Molly has experience working in outreach in Higher Education and organising and delivering events for widening participation groups.