Professor Nick Jennings
Judge
Professor Nick Jennings is an internationally-recognised authority in the areas of AI, autonomous systems, cyber-security and agent-based computing.
He is a member of the UK government’s AI Council, the governing body of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and chair of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Policy Committee.
Previously, Professor Jennings was the Vice-Provost for Research and Enterprise at Imperial College London, the UK Government’s first Chief Scientific Advisor for National Security, and the Regius Professor of Computer Science (a post bestowed by the monarch to recognise exceptionally high quality research) at the University of Southampton.
Nick's personal research focuses on developing AI systems for large-scale, open and dynamic environments. In particular, he is interested in how to endow individual autonomous agents with the ability to act and interact in flexible ways and with effectively engineering systems that contain both humans and software agents. He is passionate about the real-world impact of research and has been involved with deployments of systems in domains such as business process management, smart energy systems, defence, telecommunications, sensor networks, disaster response and citizen science. He has also been involved with a number of start-ups including Aerogility, Crossword Cybersecurity, Contact Engine, Darktrace, Rebellion Defence and Reliance Cyber Systems.