Oktay Cetinkaya is a PETRAS Synthesis Senior Research Associate based at the University of Oxford, with the primary role of “synthesising” the diverse elements of the PETRAS research base to increase the generality and applicability of the findings across 22 institutions. Oktay received his BEng degrees (H. Hons) with a double major in Electrical Engineering & Electronics and Communication Engineering from Yildiz Technical University, Turkey, in 2013 and 2014, respectively. He then started pursuing a PhD in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Koç University, Turkey, and was awarded in early 2018. After his PhD, he first worked as a Research Fellow in Networked Embedded Systems at the University of Southampton, then as a Research Associate in Wireless Network Performance at The University of Sheffield for two years each. During these appointments, he wrote funding proposals, co-led research projects, supervised junior staff, and gave several talks, in addition to his research duties/outputs. His research interests include energy harvesting-aided wireless-powered communications for the Internet of Things, on which he has published more than 25 scientific papers in highly-respected journals, conference proceedings, and book series.
Professor Rachel Cooper OBE is Distinguished Professor of Design Management and Policy at Lancaster University. She is founding Director of ImaginationLancaster, an open and exploratory design-led research centre conducting applied and theoretical research into people, products, places and their interactions. Her research interests cover: design thinking; design management; design policy; and across all sectors of industry. An academic leader with 20 years research experience and collaboration with industry partners. Rachel Cooper has led large interdisciplinary research programmes related to design, many of which have focused on the future of people, places and products in both physical and digital environments. Professor Cooper has undertaken several advisory roles to national and international universities, government and non-governmental organisations. She was a Lead Expert for the UK Government Foresight programme on the Future of Cities (2013-2016), a member of the Blackett Review of the Internet of Things (2014) ,was on the UK Academy of Medical Sciences Working group addressing ‘The Health of the Public 2040’ (2015-16) and is a currently a Chair of the UK Prevention Research Partnership, Expert Advisory Group. She is also series editor of the Routledge series Design for Social Responsibility. She was founding editor of The Design Journal and also founding President of the European Academy of Design. She is currently President of the Design Research Society. Rachel was awarded the OBE by the Queen for services to education in 2013.
Loraine Daly is the PA to the PETRAS Director Professor Jeremy Watson and assists the Head of the PETRAS Centre team when required.
Professor David De Roure FBCS FIMA FRSA is Professor of e-Research at the University of Oxford. Throughout his career he has investigated emerging technologies and models in large scale distributed and sociotechnical systems, with a broad interest in society, technology and creativity while also focusing on innovation in the process of scholarship. From an early background in electronics and computer science, he became closely involved in the Hypertext, Web, and linked data communities, in pervasive computing, and in digital social research. Today he focuses on living in the Internet of Things, on new methods of digital scholarship, and innovation in knowledge infrastructure. David’s personal research is at the intersection of music, maths, machines and AI, empowering the creative human in music composition, performance and production. David works closely with multiple disciplines including humanities (digital humanities, digital musicology), engineering (Internet of Things, cybersecurity), social sciences (Social Machines, Web Science), information science (knowledge infrastructure, computational archival science), and computer science (large scale distributed systems, AI). He is a founding member of two major UK initiatives: the PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for Internet of Things Cybersecurity, and the Software Sustainability Institute.
Amaya is a Research Assistant at PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity, providing support to the PETRAS Synthesis Fellows. Prior to this role, she was a part of the PETRAS Project Management team and still actively provides support for a wide range of operational functions. Amaya received her dual honours LLB Law and Politics degree from Queen Mary University of London, in 2021. She then went on to pursue a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) in Digital Technologies and Policy at UCL, working in collaboration with the British Standards Institution (BSI) to produce a report on the role of standards in AI governance. Amaya’s research interests include governance of emerging and disruptive technologies, explainable and responsible AI, and responsible innovation.
Sarah leads the communications team and is responsible for developing and delivering the communications strategy for PETRAS. The role involves working with the PETRAS management team and relevant stakeholders to raise the profile of the Centre, deliver clear messaging and build brand identity. Contact Sarah if you have press and media, events or general communications enquiries.
Professor Julie McCann heads up the Adaptive Emergent Systems Engineering (AESE) group in the Department of Computing at Imperial College where she leads a highly multi-disciplinary group of Post Docs and PhD students. From this she leads the Resilient and Robust Infrastructure challenge part of the Data Centric Engineering theme in the Alan Turing Institute. She is PI for the NRF funded Singapore Smart Sensing project, and the Logistics 4.0 project with PETRAS and the Tate Modern. She is Imperial PI for the EPSRC Science of Sensing Systems Software (S4) programme grant. Until recently she was Co-director of the Intel Collaborative Research Institute on Sustainable Connected Cities and Co-PI of the NEC Smart Water Lab. She is currently Director of the cross-Imperial Smart Connected Futures Network. Until recently she was Co-director of the Intel Collaborative Research Institute on Sustainable Connected Cities and Co-PI of the NEC Smart Water Lab and Director of the cross-Imperial Smart Connected Futures Network. She is actively involved in the field’s top conferences (Infocom, Sensys, IPSN, and EWSN) and is an Associated Editor for IoT-J. McCann’s body of practical work unifies decentralised algorithms, protocols, cross-layer, dynamical solutions, with a particular focus on low-powered, low-resourced devices that can act as modern wireless sensor-based systems or future smart matter. She applies this to Space, Agri and Infrastructure Engineering challenges (encompassing the Internet of Things and Cyber-physical systems). Her interests lie in harnessing the various interactions between the cyber and physical to improve performance, resilience and to make secure. Areas of Interest: Bio-inspired computing, smart farming, smart cities, industry 4.0, critical infrastructures. Affiliations: Imperial College, Department of Computing. Twitter: @JAMGMcC
Peter Novitzky is a senior research fellow at PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity, Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP), UCL, specialising in the ethical challenges of AI, safety and security. Peter's appointment follows research and teaching roles working mainly on multiple European projects as well as a position at the National University of Singapore. Peter successfully completed his PhD in applied philosophy at Dublin City University (Ireland), where he specialised in the ethics of artificial intelligence for vulnerable populations. His long-term research interests focus on the intersection of bioethics, AI ethics, research integrity, and most recently, responsibility in research and innovation. Peter is a magna cum laude graduate of the Erasmus Mundus Master of Bioethics obtained from the consortium of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (Netherlands) and Università degli Studi di Padova (Italy). He also studied and performed research at Pázmány Péter Catholic University (Hungary) and Charles University in Prague (Czechia). He continues to engage in research with collaborators in Canada, UK and the Netherlands.
Dr Gideon Ogunniye is a Senior Research Fellow at PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity, Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP), UCL, specialising in AI ethics, privacy and cybersecurity. Prior to joining PETRAS, he was a Research Associate on CONTEXT project which is part of the projects of the REPHRAIN research centre. The project focuses on understanding the role of contexts in managing privacy online. He also worked as a Research Associate on ReEnTrust project. The project explores new technological opportunities for platforms to regain user trust and aims to identify how this may be achieved in ways that are user-driven and responsible. The focus is on AI algorithms and large scale platforms used by the general public. He has worked on a variety of issues relating to the following themes: knowledge representation and reasoning, argumentation theories, argumentation-based agent dialogues, trust computing and reputation mechanisms, explainable and responsible AI, agent communication and language semantics, AI ethics, machine reasoning, and human-computer interaction. He received the Ph.D. degree in Computing Science from the University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, U.K., in 2019, which was about modelling trust and trust dialogues using augmentation theories.
Rajab has more than 20 years of balanced experience in developing, managing, using, and promoting Computer-Aided Engineering solutions – gained while working at world-leading establishments in academia and software industry and supporting small & large companies in their Innovation & Development. Rajab’s principal responsibility is in building strategic partnerships across industries working in the IoT & AI domain to facilitate direct collaboration and knowledge transfer to maximise the impact of the state-of-the-art research carried out within PETRAS academic consortium. Please contact Rajab if you have any question about our research activities and/or how you can play a part as an industrial partner.
Professor Tim Watson FBCS FIET is a Professor of Cyber Security and the Director of the Cyber Security Centre at the Loughborough University. With more than thirty years’ experience working with government, industry and in academia, he has been involved with a wide range of programmes, several high-profile projects and has acted as a consultant for some of the largest telecoms, power and transport companies. He is an adviser to various parts of the UK government and to several professional and standards bodies. Tim’s research includes EU-funded projects on combating cyber crime, UK MoD research into automated defence, insider threat and secure remote working, and UKRI-funded research, focusing on the protection of critical national infrastructure against cyber attack. In PETRAS he is the Chair of the Research Excellence Board.
Professor Jeremy D Watson CBE FREng FIET J D Watson is the PI and Director of the PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems security, Prof of Engineering Systems at UCL STEaPP, and Chief Scientist and Engineer at BRE; he was previously President of the IET, Global Research Director at Arup, Technology Director of BOC Edwards, and Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Communities & Local Government during which time he served on SAGE. He currently is lead Fellow for Engineering Policy at the RAEng, and chair of the National Engineering Policy Centre Committee. Areas of Expertise Behaviour Change; Data Science; Energy; Public Policy & Governance; Risk & Security; Systems Engineering; eResearch Affiliations NPL Science & Technology Advisory Council (STAC); Technology Strategy Board (now Innovate UK); Institute for Sustainability and of Building SMART UK; NERC Innovation Advisory Board and Building SMART UK; Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Twitter: @ProfJeremyW