World-class data experts

We are a multi and interdisciplinary Institute, bringing together expertise in analytics and data science from across our University.

Our academics and researchers are leading the way internationally in advanced analytics and data science. We're shaping new thinking, accelerating discovery and nurturing bright ideas to improve lives.

Our experts

Core Institute members

Dr Spyros Samothrakis

Chief Scientific Adviser for the county of Essex

School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex

Field of study: Reinforcement learning, machine learning, neural networks, role playing games.

Dr Marta Fernandez De Arroyabe Arranz

Deputy Director of IADS

EBS - Strategy, Operations and Entrepreneurship (SOE), University of Essex

Research interests: Innovation, Digitalisation & Cybersecurity, Environmental Management, and Entrepreneurship.

Dr JunKyu Lee

Research Fellow (IADS)

School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE), University of Essex

Research interests: Machine learning, energy-efficient machine learning, trustworthy AI, tinyML, federated learning, kernel methods, signal processing, FPGAs, numerical linear algebra, the mathematical and computational foundation of energy-efficient machine learning, accuracy and stability analysis of machine learning according to dynamically varying environments, and incorporating numerical linear algebra properties into machine learning frameworks.

Dr Nina Markl

Research Fellow (IADS)

Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex

Research interests: Sociolinguistics, language variation and change, the impact of speech technologies on speech communities and speech technologies and AI ethics.

Dr Insaf Ullah

Research Fellow (IADS)

School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex

Research interests: Cybersecurity.

 Naomi Biggs

Executive Officer/Institute Administrator

School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex

 Sri Chilakamarri

KTP Associate

Institute for Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex

 Minerva Sarma

KTP Associate

Institute for Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex

 Nikilkumar Patel

KTP Associate

Institute for Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex

 Charmin Ukwaththa Jayalalge

KTP Associate

Institute for Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex

 Yuchen Zhang

KTP Associate

Institute for Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex

 David Barragan Alcantar

Postgraduate Research Student

Institute for Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex

 Fatemeh Faraji

Postgraduate Research Student

Institute for Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex

 Laila Alqahtani

Postgraduate Research Student

Institute for Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex

 Samuel Daniels

Postgraduate Research Student

Institute for Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex

Rehab Hamdi

Postgraduate Research Student

Institute for Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex

Alumni

  • Professor Maria Fasli - Founding Director of IADS.
  • Dr David Clark - quantitative ecology, microbial ecology, macroecology, modeling and statistics, bioinformatics, next generation sequencing.
  • Dr Amanda Cole - sociolinguistics, language attitudes, language variation and change.
  • Dr Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill - biological machine learning, computational palaeobiology, quantifying evolutionary convergence.
  • Dr Ana Matran-Fernandez - Brain-Computer Interfaces, machine learning applied to biomedical signals, Event-Related Potentials (ERPS), memory, decision-making, algorithmic fairness, neural engineering.
  • Dr Akitaka Matsuo - computational analysis of political texts, scaling of survey responses and political behaviour, online survey experiments.
  • Dr Sefki Kolozali - internet of things, machine learning, semantic web, signal processing, time series analysis, internet of things in healthcare.
  • Dr Haider Raza - big data and analytics, Brain-Computer Interfaces, deep learning, transfer learning, non-stationary learning and domain adaptation, artificial intelligence and machine learning, EEG and MEG signal processing, AI in decision making for healthcare.
  • Dr Lina Barakat - Decision making under uncertainty, Service-oriented systems, Optimisation algorithms, Trust and reputation mechanisms, Incentive engineering, Machine learning, Multi-agent Systems, Provenance of data and Semantic modelling.
  • Dr Kitty Kioskli - Cybersecurity in healthcare, e-health, behaviour change, psychosocial and human factors in critical infrastructures, as well as cognitive and psychological assessment and interventions.
  • Dr Alejandro Quiroz Florez - Former Chief Scientific Adviser for the county of Essex.
  • Dr Annalivia Polselli - Econometric methods for panel data models, jackknife method, machine learning, labour and gender economics.
  • Damian Machlanski - Former Postgraduate Research Student.

Visiting researchers

  • Professor David García Rosado, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
  • Dr Christos Kalloniatis, University of the Aegean, Greece
  • Dr Shitharth Selvarajan, Kebri Dehar University, Ethiopia
  • Professor Antonio Santos-Olmo Parra, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
  • Professor Luis Enrique Sánchez Crespo, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
  • Dr Elton Sbruzzi, Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, Brazil
  • Damiano Duranti, University of Trento, Italy
  • Aya Kherrour, University of Trento, Italy

Honorary appointments

  • Professor Stephen Kavanagh QPM DL, Executive Director of Policing, Interpol.le

Bioinformatics and biomedical scientists

Computer and electronic engineering scientists

  • Dr Alba Garcia Seco De Herrera - computational neuroscience
  • Dr Amit Singh - embedded AI
  • Dr Anirban Chowdhury - brain-computer interfaces, assistive technology, neurorehabilitation, human-robot co-operation, autonomous mobile robots
  • Dr Anish Jindal - smart cities, data analytics, artificial intelligence, cyber-physical systems, wireless networks, security, machine learning
  • Dr Cunjin Luo - medical informatics, biomedical signal processing, AI for healthcare, cyber security for healthcare, digital health, computing in cardiology, biomedical engineering
  • Dr Delaram Jarchi - AI and machine learning
  • Dr Faiyaz Doctor - AI in computer vision
  • Dr Ian Daly - Brain-computer interfacing, machine learning
  • Dr Javier Andreu-Perez - artificial intelligence and machine learning
  • Dr Jichun Li - applied machine learning, bespoke robotics/automation, artificial intelligence
  • Dr Junhua LI - machine learning and artificial intelligence (developing novel algorithms for classification and recognition; detecting brain diseases based on neuroimaging data; developing systems of monitoring human health)
  • Dr Mays AL-Naday - cyber security
  • Dr Michael Barros - AI and engineering in medicine
  • Dr Michael Kampouridis - applications of machine learning to finance
  • Dr Mohammed Jameel - computational methods for machine learning with applications to text mining
  • Dr Morteza Varasteh - machine learning, deep learning, reinforcement learning
  • Dr Panagiotis Kanellopoulos - algorithmic game theory, algorithmic mechanism design, design and analysis of algorithms, reinforcement learning
  • Dr Renato Amorim - machine learning, exploratory data analysis
  • Dr Sebastian Halder - Brain-Computer Interfaces
  • Dr Serafeim Perdikis - Brain-Computer Interface, machine learning
  • Dr Vahid Abolghasemi - machine learning and pattern recognition
  • Dr Xinruo Zhang - machine learning for wireless communications
  • Dr Yunfei Long - developing novel natural language processing and graph representation learning techniques for modelling health related data
  • Dr Zilong Liu - machine learning for communication systems
  • Professor Francisco Sepulveda - Brain-computer interfaces, intelligent systems (both artificial and natural)
  • Professor Dimitri Ognibene - Artificial Intelligence
  • Professor Hani Hagras - explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), data science
  • Professor Kun Yang - AI for communications
  • Professor Leila Musavian - machine learning for communication
  • Professor Nikolaos Thomos - machine learning for communication
  • Professor Reinhold Scherer - Brain-Computer Interfaces, statistical and adaptive signal processing
  • Professor Riccardo Poli - machine vision, image and signal processing, Artificial Intelligence
  • Professor Luca Citi - machine learning, learning from biological signals and data (EEG, etc).
  • Dr Adrian Clark - computer vision and its applications, including robot vision, vision in a 3D world, and astronomy, automatic construction of vision systems using machine learning and evaluation of algorithms, data visualisation and augmented reality.
  • Professor David Crawford - analysis of huge data generated by new multimedia and broadcast formats like high frame rate/extended dynamic range/multiview and ultra-high definition TV.
  • Dr Michael Fairbank - neural networks, adaptive dynamic programming, game artificial intelligence, financial forecasting.
  • Professor Maria Fasli - agent-based modelling, simulation, analysis of structured/unstructured data, machine learning, adaptation, semantic information extraction, ontologies, recommendation technologies.
  • Professor John Gan - machine learning for data modelling and analysis, dimensionality reduction and feature selection in high-dimensional data space.
  • Professor Dongbing Gu - applying data processing tools to process heterogeneous sensory information for robot navigation and control.
  • Professor Klaus McDonald-Maier - embedded systems and system-on-chip design, cybersecurity and advanced computer architectures, AI and data analytics.
  • Dr Udo Kruschwitz - natural language processing, analysis textual/unstructured data, information retrieval.
  • Dr Maria Kyropoulou - algorithm game theory, design and analysis of algorithms, and approximation algorithms. 
  • Professor Edward Tsang - applied AI, constraint satisfaction, computational finance and economics, agent-based simulations.
  • Professor Stuart Walker - large scale (4/8k) video data compression and streaming, self-service infrastructure containers for data intensive applications, hypercube-based code generation strategies for secure communications.
  • Professor Kun Yang - wireless networks, future internet architecture, network virtualization, cloud networking and applications.
  • Dr Wenxing Guo - Statistical Machine Learning.
  • Dr John O'Hara - The study of differential equations in finance, The application of artificial intelligence in finance.
  • Dr Lan Truong - Information-theoretic methods in machine learning and data science, Theory of deep learning and representation learning,Multi-arm bandits and their applications, Kernel methods in machine learning,Concentration inequalities and their applications in machine learning and information theory, Shannon's theory for communication, High Dimensional Statistical Algorithms.
  • Dr Shoaib Ehsan - Computer Vision, Robotics, Embedded Systems, Artificial Intelligence.
  • Professor Huosheng Hu - Intelligent Systems and Autonomous Mobile Robots, Networked robots and network enable systems/devices, Smart sensors, actuators and Mechatronics, Sensor integration and Data fusion algorithms, Tele-rehabilitation, tele-care, tele-health, Intelligent wheelchairs, Genetic Algorithms, Fuzzy Logic and Neural Networks in Robotics, Pervasive computing, mobile computing, eLearning, Distributed computer architecture and Parallel processing, AI and Robotics.
  • Dr Ravi Shekhar - Natural Language Processing, Cross-Lingual Representation, Language and Vision Interaction, and Social Media Analysis.

Economists, finance and business experts

Health and social care experts

Digital humanities experts

  • Dan Chen - advanced simultaneous interpreting with technologies.
  • Professor Timo Jütten - philosophical foundations of human rights (the relationship between human dignity and human rights, mental capacity and human rights, human rights and big data).
  • Dounia Bissar - new technologies for learning and teaching.
  • Dr Claire Delle Luche - experimental methods, such as eye-tracking, in psycholinguistics.
  • Dr Laetitia Vedrenne - technology-enhanced language learning.
  • Dr Laurel Lawyer - cognitive neurolinguistics, 'big data' approaches to EEG and fMRI, statistical methods in linguistics, stochastic and computational models of language. learning and usage, speech perception, automatic speech recognition, linguistic corpora.
  • Ignazia Posadinu – Technology and language learning, Computer aided translation and interpreting.

Legal, ethics and human rights experts

Statisticians and mathematicians

  • Dr Georgios Amanatidis - algorithmic game theory; graph theory; discrete optimization, operational research.
  • Dr Chris Antonopoulos – complex networks, complex systems, chaos theory, dynamical systems, computational neuroscience.
  • Dr Oludare Ariyo – medical statistics, applied statistics.
  • Dr Joseph Bailey - mathematical biology/ecology, individual and group movement, random walk theory, movement and time-series data analysis, mathematical education.
  • Dr Yanchun Bao – longitudinal data analysis; survival analysis; mendelian randomization; causal method (instrumental variable method, structural mean model); covariance modelling, machine learning.
  • Professor Edward Codling – animal movement and dispersal; random walks and diffusion; analysis of movement data; collective behaviour; human crowd behaviour; animal social network analysis; fisheries modelling, assessment, and management; modelling population dynamics.
  • Dr Louise Corti - quality assessment of big data, provision of access to large-scale datasets for research including licensing and privacy issues.
  • Dr. Vasileios Giagos - bayesian statistics, computing intensive methods, statistical applications.
  • Dr Stella Hadjiantoni - numerical methods for the development of recursive regularisation and machine learning algorithms, data science.
  • Dr Andrew Harrison - bioinformatics, scientific big data, cloud computing, sources of bias and errors in data, data sharing within the developing world.
  • Dr Junlei Hu - optimal robust insurance; actuarial and financial modeling and optimisation.
  • Professor Berthold Lausen - data science, biostatistics, clinical research, computational statistics, data analysis, epidemiology, public health, systems biology.
  • Dr Peng Liu - teaches: survival analysis (ma216); capstone project: data science and analytics (ma838); advanced capstone project: actuarial science, data science or mathematics (ma930).
  • Dr Jianya Lu - applied probability, financial mathematics.
  • Dr Osama Mahmoud - medical statistics; biostatistics; causal inference; data science; clustering and classification; statistical modelling.
  • Dr Felipe Maldonado - supply chain & logistics - machine learning approach, operational research.
  • Dr. Yassir Rabhi - nonparametric statistics, survival analysis, time series.
  • Professor Abdellah Salhi - optimisation mathematical programming and heuristics (evolutionary computing, nature-inspired algorithms, the strawberry algorithm); numerical analysis data mining (big data) bioinformatics.
  • Dr Dmitry Savostyanov - high-dimensional problems using  low-rank tensor, modern numerical mathematics.
  • Dr Alexei Vernitski - machine learning in mathematics; reinforcement learning applied to knot theory.
  • Professor Spyridon Vrontos - actuarial and financial modelling, asset-liability management, evaluation of funds performance, predictability, risk management.
  • Professor Matthew Woollard - research integrity (replication/validation) of big data, curation and access to large-scale datasets for supporting research, ethical issues relating to the use and access to these data.
  • Dr Jackie Wong Siaw Tze - machine learning in actuarial science.
  • Dr Xinan Yang - dynamic programming, operational research.

Social and political scientists

  • Dr Allyson Benton - time-series analysis of political effects on finance markets.
  • Dr Jonathan Burton - survey response, mixed mode survey design, and the willingness to consent to data linkage.
  • Dr Martin Steinwand - spatial econometrics, international organizations, foreign aid, and civil war.
  • Dr Miranda Simon - computational social science, agent based models, refugee and immigration politics.
  • Dr Patrick Lown - large survey data, hierarchical regression analysis, measurement, lab and survey experimentation, survey design.
  • Dr Ryan Bakker - Bayesian methods, scaling survey responses, party politics and political ideology.
  • Prof Royce Carroll - scaling methodology in the measurement of ideology in legislative and party politics.
  • Professor Kristian Skrede Gleditsch - conflict and cooperation, political geography, data development, GIS and spatial data, applied statistics, prediction.
  • Professor Tarek Al Baghal  - questionnaire design, quantitative methods, cognitive psychology, mobile data collection, social media data.
  • Dr James Allen-Robertson - data scraping, text mining, algorithmic power, practical big data ethics, digital culture.
  • Professor Nick Allum - survey methodology, analysis large-scale data, public understanding of science, social psychology of risk, social and political trust.
  • Professor Michaela Benzeval - collection and analysis of large-scale data, applied health research, health inequalities across lifecourse, biomarkers.
  • Professor Pete Fussey - uses, impacts and regulation of surveillance technology, the use of technology for social control, modes of urban digital governance (including smart city initiatives).
  • Dr Katerina Hadjimatheou - police and tech ethics, digital policing, surveillance.
  • Professor Meena Kumari - biomarkers and genetics data.
  • Professor Philip Leifeld  - social, political, and economic networks, computational social sciences, complex systems, comparative public policy and governance, agent-based modelling, regression models for network datasets.
  • Dr Sergio Lo Iacono - social trust; collective action dilemmas; web scraping; agent-based modelling.
  • Professor Peter Lynn -survey design, survey.
  • Dr Tara Mahfoud - intersections between science, technology and medicine.
  • Professor John Preston - artificial intelligence and further education.
  • Dr Carlos Solar - cybersecurity and cyber defence.
  • Professor Paul Whiteley - electoral behaviour and public opinion research, electoral forecasting using opinion poll data.
  • Dr Patryk Bronka - Agent-based modelling and dynamic microsimulation.
  • Professor Paul Clarke - Machine learning methods in causal inference.
  • Dr Angus Holford - Evidence-based policy; randomised control trials; peer effects; microeconometrics; family economics; education inequalities.
  • Mr Damian Machlanski - Machine learning methods in causal inference.
  • Dr Annette Jäckle - Survey data collection using mobile applications and sensors, respondent consent to data linkage, questionnaire design, effects of mixed mode data collection on participation and measurement error, methodology of longitudinal surveys.
  • Dr Alita Nandi - Ethnicity and gender, causes and consequences of harassment and discrimination, measurement of institutional characteristics in developing countries.

Human behaviour experts

  • Dr Alasdair Clarke - visual perception, search, and decision making.
  • Dr Geoff Cole - Cognitive neuropsychology, visual cognition, comparative psychology, colour vision
  • Dr Tom Foulsham - visual attention, social attention, eye movements, real and virtual interactions.
  • Dr Helge Gillmeister - interest in machine learning algorithms as applied to EEG data pattern analysis.
  • Professor Paul Hibbard - computational neuroscience; machine learning; deep neural networks; virtual and augmented reality (XR).
  • Dr Anna Hughes - visual search, visual camouflage and mimicry, cognitive modelling.
  • Dr Megan Klabunde - machine learning.
  • Dr Marlene Poncet - Object recognition, visual neuroscience, numerosity, perception, EEG
  • Dr Motonori Yamaguchi - cognitive modelling; computational modelling.
  • Dr Rick O'Gorman - Cooperation and altruism, Computer modelling of social phenomenon, Applications of social cognition techniques to evolutionary questions, Biosocial psychology, Evolutionary psychology.

Institute Research Fellows

Combining research innovation and career development

Are you passionate about your research field? Are you ambitious to develop your academic career? Do you aspire to make a difference? Join us on our unique research fellowship programme!