About

Advaith Siddharthan PROFILE PHOTO

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.

Projects

SENSE

Funder: EPSRC
Dates: 2021-2024

Sensory Explorations of Nature in School Environments. This project seeks to augment nature observation outdoors through developing variable-friction haptic interfaces that allow you to feel texture when touching an image on the screen... Read more

Partners: Imperial College London, University of Edinburgh, Learning through Landscapes.

DECIDE

Funder: NERC
Dates: 2020-2022

Delivering Enhanced Biodiversity Information with Adaptive Citizen Science and Intelligent Digital Engagements. This project seeks to construct good biodiversity models generated from available data, communicate these models well, and preferentially target effort to add records from times and places that optimally improve the model outputs...Read more

Partners: Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (Lead), University of York, University of Warick, et al.

Cos4Cloud

Funder: EU H2020
Dates: 2019-2023

Co-designed citizen observatories for the EOS-Cloud. This project aims to design, prototyped and implemented services that address the Open Science challenges shared by Citizen observatories of biodiversity, based on the experience of participating platforms such as iSpot Nature...Read more

Partners: Agencia estatal consejo superior deinvestigaciones cientificas (Lead), Conservation education and research trust, et al.

Human-Computer Collaborative Learning in Citizen Science

Funder: EPSRC
Dates: 2019-2022

This project explores the potential for collaborative learning between humans and machines within the framework of environmental citizen science....Read more

Partners: Imperial College London, University of Aberdeen, Learning through Landscapes, St Alban's CoE Primary School.

X-Polli:Nation

Funder: National Geographic
Dates: 2019-2021

X:Polli-Nation (pronounced cross-pollination) is a biodiversity citizen science project embedded in primary schools...Read more

Partners: Imperial College London (Lead), University of Aberdeen, Learning through Landscapes, St Alban's CoE Primary School, Natural History Museum of Maremma.

Publications

View all publications on Google Scholar

Personal



A few things away from work that I've tried my hand at for extended periods...

Collecting Lemur Poo

I once spent two months in Madagascar monitoring Lemur behaviour and habitats.

Photographing birds

I find this comforting as I can indulge in it anywhere. How many can you identify?

Contact

Want to know more about my research? Fill in the form below and I'll be in touch!

Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
United Kingdom

+44 (0)1908 653584