NCL Living Library
Meet the experts taking part in our NCL Living Library
As part of NCL in Action's launch day, you will have the opportunity to talk to the Newcastle academics and alumni experts behind the books, the research and the articles about AI and emerging technologies.
Read bios for the experts taking part below to decide who you would like to talk to. Please note that you will only be able to sign up to talk to an expert on the day of the event during the registration process.
Dr Jurek Kozyra is a deep-tech entrepreneur specialising in DNA nanotechnology, DNA computing, and artificial intelligence.
He founded NANOVERY in 2018, where he has spent the past six years driving the advancement of nanotechnology and its applications in molecular testing to support drug development and disease diagnosis.
Before NANOVERY, Jurek spent seven years at ICOS, a leading UK synthetic biology group, developing algorithms for DNA sequences and designing nanodevices.
His work is at the interface of computational biology and molecular engineering, contributing to progress in precision medicine.
Anya Hurlbert co-founded Newcastle’s Institute of Neuroscience in 2003, serving as its co-Director until 2014, and now steers the Centre for Transformative Neuroscience.
She was a Marshall Scholar and holds degrees in physics, physiology, brain and cognitive science, and medicine from US and UK institutions.
Working with partners at the RVI and Newcastle University, Anya led the OCTAHEDRON project where cutting edge AI technology was used for diagnosing neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis from eye scans. The project is one of the first winners of the AI in Health and Care Award from the NIHR.
Dr Stephen McGough is a Reader (Professor) in Machine Learning in the School of Computing Science at Newcastle University focusing on Deep Learning.
He studied Mathematics at Durham University as an undergraduate (1993) before studying his MSc (1996) and PhD (2000) at Newcastle University in the School of Computing.
Dr McGough held a Turing Fellowship (2018-2023) where he focused on research into how to develop the most optimal Deep Learning solution to a given problem. Dr McGough spent two years as Researcher in Residence at the Digital Catapult in London, working to increase the uptake of Deep Learning by companies. His research focus is on applying novel Deep Learning to real-world problems.
Rachel’s research interests are in quantifying patterns, sources, and impacts of spatial inequality, and in novel forms of data and analysis to identify, characterise, and address these inequalities.
She works at the regional and local scales to understand how societal and technological innovations (e.g., smart city technologies) can be implemented equitably and justly; how best to characterise or measure the populations and features of places; how location and scale are related to spatial inequalities and demographic change; and how migration, especially internal, affects demographic composition.
She is especially interested in how we use data and statistics to understand what sorts of people are located where, how this changes over time, and what these changes mean for our understanding of spatial inequality.
Paul Watson FREng FBCS CEng began his career at Manchester University before moving to industry. In 1995 he joined Newcastle University where his research and teaching have focussed on scalable data engineering.
Professor Watson is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the British Computer Society. He received the 2014 Microsoft Jim Gray eScience Award.
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Caroline specialises in non-contentious commercial, technology and data protection work. Her practice involves advising on a wide variety of commercial contracts including terms and conditions of supply, licensing and manufacturing arrangements, outsourcing agreements (IT and BPO), FinTech, cloud computing, systems integration, general IP, e-commerce, app development, terms of use, AI, cybersecurity, data protection and privacy law matters.
Caroline routinely advises on day to day compliance with data protection and privacy law matters and has significant experience of managing and advising on strategically important data protection compliance projects.
Caroline is noted as a leading individual in Chambers and Legal 500 for IT in the North East and is a member of the Society for Computers and Law and is a regular speaker on FinTech, AI, data protection and cybersecurity. She also sits on the strategic board for the North East's cybersecurity cluster, CyberNorth.
