Professor Alison Noble and Professor Michael Bronstein, both based at the University of Oxford, have been awarded UKRI Turing AI World-Leading Researcher Fellowships.
These fellowships aim to advance trustworthy and secure AI solutions for major global challenges.
Starting this month, Professor Bronstein and Professor Noble joined the esteemed group of Turing AI Fellows, which now includes 27 researchers.
The Turing AI Fellowships play a key role in the UK's ongoing efforts to enhance its standing as a global leader in the fields of data science and AI. They form an £8 million investment within a larger £54 million initiative announced by UKRI earlier this year.
The initiative is designed to retain, attract and develop the most exceptional international AI researchers and is a central component of the AI Sector Deal’s ambitious skills and talent package. Fellows come from a range of disciplines and engage in cutting-edge and creative AI research, collaborating with partners across sectors to amplify the impact of their work.
The programme aims to foster a transformative effect on the global AI research and innovation landscape. In addition to conducting world-leading research, fellows enhance their leadership position within the national and international research community. This role allows them to advocate and become ambassadors for the strategic direction of the UK's AI ecosystem.
The Fellowships are delivered in partnership with The Alan Turing Institute, EPSRC on behalf of UK Research and Innovation, and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. The Turing supports the fellowships in a collaborative cohort management role, working with delivery partners to ensure the ambitious goals of the scheme are met.
To continue attracting outstanding AI talent, a new call for the Turing AI World-Leading Researcher Fellowships is now underway.
Dr Jean Innes, CEO of The Alan Turing Institute, said: “My congratulations to Professor Noble and Professor Bronstein on being awarded these fellowships. The scheme supports the work of leading AI researchers to make significant advances in the field of AI, by developing new AI technologies that can be applied to national and global challenges, such as biomedical imaging and drug design. We look forward to seeing the continuing impact of their work on the AI research and innovation landscape.”
More information about the fellows:
Professor Alison Noble’s academic research focuses on the intersection between artificial intelligence (specifically, computer vision) and biomedical imaging, with her group renowned for its contributions to machine learning-based ultrasound image analysis.
Through the fellowship, Professor Noble aims to advance new AI models for collaborative human-machine decision-making in healthcare imaging. This includes an exploration of the ethical aspects of AI and trustworthiness, particularly in terms of explaining decisions.
Teaming up with clinical partners, Professor Noble will create human skill models of clinical tasks using machine learning-based analysis on video and other sensor data. This effort will foster increased collaboration between UK academia and industry in healthcare imaging, while also examining the impact of AI adoption alongside human skills. Together with industry partners, the project will develop and test a career mobility initiative tailored for postdoctoral-level AI scientists.
Professor Michael Bronstein, the DeepMind Professor of AI in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, is an expert in theoretical and computational geometric methods for machine learning and data science. His research spans a diverse range of applications, including computer vision, pattern recognition, biochemistry, drug design, and animal communication.
Through the fellowship, Professor Bronstein will develop a novel mathematical framework for geometric and graph machine learning. In collaboration with partners from academia and industry, Professor Bronstein will employ these methods to tackle some of the most complex issues within drug and food design domains. This includes tasks such as creating novel therapeutic molecules and mapping the 'dark matter' of bioactive ingredients in food.
