Michael Rovatsos

Michael Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the School of Informatics, part of the Artificial Intelligence and its Applications Institute (AIAI), and academic liaison for the University of Edinburgh at the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s National Institute for Data Science and AI. From 2018 to 2023, he was Director of the Bayes Centre, the University’s innovation hub for Data Science and AI, and he coordinated the University’s AI Strategy as Deputy Vice Principal Research (AI) from 2020 to 2022. He is currently also lead on AI Adoption for the University, supporting the adoption of AI in our research, teaching, and operations. My personal journey in AI started in 1999, while working on my undergrad thesis at the University of Saarbrücken. After a year working as a software engineer at an AI startup in Frankfurt, I started studying toward a PhD at the Technical University of Munich, developing methods for to enable agents learn optimal interaction strategies when using structured communication languages. I joined the University of Edinburgh as a Lecturer after completing my PhD in 2004, and have been at the University ever since, progressing to Senior Lecturer in 2013, Reader in 2017, and Professor in 2019. My research is in multiagent systems, with a focus on the development of ethical and responsible AI algorithms.