I read Physics at the University of Delhi, and Computer Science at the University of Cambridge before gained my PhD in Computational Linguistics at the University of Cambridge (2003). After Postdoctoral research at Columbia University and the University of Cambridge, I took up my first faculty position at the University of Aberdeen in 2009 before joining the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute in 2017 as a Reader.
My research intersects Citizen Science, Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, facilitating societal access to information by mining, simplifying and summarising complex texts and by communicating data through language. I develop socially responsible AI technologies that bridge the divide between professional scientists and lay public, facilitate meaningful public engagement with science and foster attitudinal and behavioural change, particularly around biodiversity issues. I am the academic lead for three citizen science projects at the OU:
My current research investigates science learning within such citizen science projects, especially how citizens can learn alongside artificial intelligence from data. More details of my projects can be found at the Citizen Science and Artificial Intelligence group pages.