Leadership Team

Nigel Davies

Nigel Davies

Nigel Davies is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Co-Director of DSI@Lancaster. He has held visiting positions at Sony Electronics, Google Research, ETH Zurich and CMU. His work is in the area of pervasive computing including systems support for new forms of data capture and interaction and is characterised by an experimental approach involving large-scale deployments of novel systems with end-users. He has chaired many of the major conferences in the field and is a former editor of IEEE Pervasive Computing and an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. He has been PI or CI on over £9.8 million worth of grants.

Chris Nemeth

Chris is a Professor at the School of Mathematical Sciences and joined the Leadership team in January 2024 as the DSI Lead in AI, he became the interim co-director in April 2024 and appointed as full Co-Director in August 2025. He is Lancaster's Academic Liaison to the Turing University Network and the N8CIR Machine Learning Theme Lead. Chris's main research interests are at the intersection of probability, statistics and machine learning, with a focus on developing the underpinning mathematical foundations of probabilistic machine learning algorithms. In 2018, he was awarded an EPSRC fellowship on Scalable Data Science, and in 2021, an EPSRC Turing AI fellowship on Probabilistic Algorithms for Scalable and Computable Approaches to Learning (PASCAL). He is currently an investigator on the EPSRC-funded Probabilistic AI Hub, and since joining Lancaster, he has been a PI/CI on over £14m worth grant funding.

Sally Keith

In June 2024 Sally became the Environment Theme lead. She is a Senior Lecturer in Marine Ecology within Lancaster Environment Centre, specialising in coral reefs as a model system with which to understand ecological dynamics. She tries to figure out why species are where they are, how they co-exist, and what might happen to these ecological patterns in the future. To do that, she combines fieldwork, statistics, and theoretical modelling to link ecological processes across spatial and temporal scales. In recent years, Sally has become particularly fascinated by the role for animal behaviour in generating and maintaining ecological dynamics at larger spatial scales, recently developing the new field of Macro-behaviour. This research comes with many challenges echoed throughout ecology and many other areas of environmental science, around how to mobilise, quantify, scale up, visualise and interpret data. These challenges can be tackled most effectively by collaboration across data science specialisms, harnessing the power of tools such as AI, VR, photogrammetry and machine learning to enhance fundamental understanding and generate innovative solutions to the biodiversity crisis. You can find out more by visiting Sally's website.

Claire Hardaker

Claire Hardaker

Claire Hardaker is a Professor of Forensic Linguistics, and she joined the DSAIL Leadership Team in 2025. Her work sits at the intersection of forensic linguistics, emerging technologies, and security. In particular, she researches how people can manipulate and deceive in digital communication, and what happens when AI does the same. As part of this, she considers the issues around AI detectability and explainability, turning messy real-world human communicative behaviours into structured intelligence, the viability of synthetic data, and the challenges and opportunities that emerging technologies pose for linguistic data. Claire works with a range of organisations to support resilience building and evidence-based decision-making, and her tools and datasets (e.g. FireAnt, VicVaDis, the Bot or Not suite) are used across research, policy, and intelligence settings. Claire also directs the MSc in Forensic Linguistics and Speech Science, one of the Faculty’s most successful postgraduate programmes, training the next generation of analysts working at the interface of language, data, and advanced technologies.

Joe Lindley

Joe Lindley

Joseph is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Arts and specialises in practice-based research about emerging technologies. He has several active AI-related projects including the Lunchbox AI Lab project (an education platform for introducing primary school students to Generative AI) and Shadowplay/PromptTank (a series of installations and software prototypes that explore real-time AI image generators). He co-authored the AHRC's Challenges of the Future report on AI & Data, contributed to the IEEE P2840 standard on Responsible AI licensing, and has published on AI and Legibility, Prompt Craft, and the planetary and more-than-human aspects of AI. He joined DSI's Leadership Team as Society Co-Theme Lead in November 2025.

Chris Edwards

Chris Edwards is a Professor of Computer Science, and the Education theme lead of DSI@Lancaster. For the past six years he has been working on improving postgraduate taught education at Lancaster, a significant part of which has been to develop and lead the MSc in Data Science, which first recruited in October 2014. The multidisciplinary programme is run jointly by the departments of Computing and Communications and Mathematical Sciences, with input for specialisms from the Environment Centre, the Management School, and the Faculties of Health and Medicine, and Arts and Social Sciences. Chris is also the Director of the newly established University Doctoral Academy.

Chris Jewell

Chris Jewell

Chris is a Professor in Mathematical Sciences, and N8CIR Digital Health Theme lead at Lancaster. His interest in high-performance computing and research software engineering comes through designing real-time decision support systems for infectious diseases, applied to outbreaks such as foot and mouth disease and SARS-CoV-2. His research currently uses GPU-accelerated Bayesian learning methodology, using high-level machine learning libraries such as Tensorflow and Theano, as well as direct CUDA implementations. Chris’s role in this group is largely management, though he hopes to contribute research-focused “how-to” sessions as the seminar programme develops.

Burak Boyaci

Burak Boyaci

Burak joined the DSI leadership team in January 2025. His research is focused on optimising real-life problems by using mathematical models. He uses one or a few large scale mixed integer linear programming formulations and some other optimisation tools to model and solve problems (close to) optimality. The current problems he is dealing with are from the areas of public and shared-use transport, offshore windfarms, airport slot allocation, waste routing and hazardous material transport.

Neil Reeves

Neil Reeves

Professor Neil Reeves has been appointed, in September 2025, as Health Theme Lead in the Data Science Institute. Neil brings internationally recognised expertise in secure digital health technologies and diabetes, a track record of ~180 publications and major EPSRC, NIH (USA) and Diabetes UK funding. Serving on EPSRC’s Healthcare Technologies Strategic Advisory Team (to March 2028) and the BSI medical devices committee, he will drive interdisciplinary collaboration, secure use of large health datasets (including NHS secure data environments), and capacity-building across the University’s health data science portfolio.

DSI Deputy Theme Leads