Dr. Zeynep Engin

Founder & Principal Investigator

Principal Investigator of GovTech Lab and founder of the international Data for Policy conference series, Dr Zeynep Engin is a Senior Research Associate at UCL’s Computer Science Department. Her research interests include topics at the interface of data science and public policy, particularly around Digital Ethics. She is primarily interested in infrastructure and methodology development to support government transformation processes under the ongoing digital revolution. Her work on ‘Algorithmic Government’ focuses on automating public services and supporting civil servants in using artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies. She is also responsible for the Computer Science contributions to the Urban Dynamics Lab, one of UK’s five Digital Economy hubs funded by EPSRC. Zeynep is also the recipient of two EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account grants and leads high-impact knowledge transfer activities in her field in collaboration with key national and international partners including Government Office for Science, Office for National Statistics, European Commission and OECD.

Giles Pavey

Co-Founder 

Giles Pavey is Global Director of Data Science at Unilever, working across a wide range of commercial, environmental and sustainability issues. Prior to this he was Head of Data Strategy and Innovation at the Department for Work & Pensions, working to increase the benefit from data and analytics for the DWP’s 22 million customers and 80,000 staff. Giles initial exposure to machine learning came when he was Head of Analytics and latterly Chief Data Scientist at the consultancy: Dunnhumby, where he worked with international retailers such as Tesco, Macey’s and Kroger. Giles is Visiting Professor of Computer Science at UCL and Industrial Fellow of Mathematics at Oxford University

Nick Davies

Co-Founder 

Nick Davies is a serving civil servant with a long-standing involvement in exploring how new technology can help with delivery of policy and improve the experience of individual and corporate citizens of interacting with government agencies. He has particular interest in innovative payment and value-transfer systems, both centralised and distributed. He was on the Payment Strategy Forum that set the direction for the development of the UK’s core payment systems and has also been an advisor to the GO Science and Lord Holmes reports on Distributed Ledger Technology.

Dr. Catherine Mulligan

Chief Technology Officer

Dr Catherine Mulligan is a Research Fellow in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship group with a joint appointment to the Department of Computing where she is Co-Director of the Imperial College Centre for Cryptocurrency Research.  She is a Fellow and an Expert of the World Economic Forum for Blockchain Technologies. Her research interests lie in the area of new economic structures enabled by the digital economy, in particular, the role of cybersecurity and Distributed Ledger Technologies in the creation of trust in digitally-enabled industries, governments and in the creation of citizen-centric smart/sustainable cities.

Prof. Jon Crowcroft

University of Cambridge and Alan Turing Institute

Prof. Jon Crowcroft is the Marconi Professor of Communications Systems in the Computer Lab, at the University of Cambridge, and the Turing Institute. He is a fellow of Wolfson College, having previously been a professor in the Department of Computer Science, University College London. He graduated in Physics from Trinity College, Cambridge University in 1979 and gained an MSc in Computing in 1981, and PhD in 1993 both from UCL. He is a fellow of the Royal Society, the ACM, the British Computer Society, the IET, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the IEEE. He is also a member of University College Union since 1979. Technical advisory boards he is on include EPSRC networking network, CognitionX, Ensemble, IMDEA Networks, Netronome, Foundation for Information Policy Research Advisory Council.

Dr. Tom Wilkinson

Department for International Development

Dr. Tom Wilkinson is the Head of Management Information and Analytics at the Department for International Development and was formerly a Senior Data Scientist at the Home Office. In both roles, he has led the prototyping and development of services that use automation and machine learning to efficiently keep decision makers informed. Alongside, he has acted as a convener and technical consultant on Distributed Ledger Technologies across government and beyond.

Prof. Philip Treleaven

University College London 

Prof. Philip Treleaven is Director of the UK Centre for Financial Computing and Business Analytics and Professor of Computing at UCL. The UK Centre is a collaboration of UCL, London School of Economics, Imperial College London and the major financial institutions, regulators, retailers and commercial organisations. The Centre undertakes analytics research in finance, retail, healthcare, services and sport. With the banks, he works on algorithmic trading, with the regulators on systemic risk, with retailers on customer analytics and with BUPA/Boots on mHealthcare.

Dr. Laura Bovo

University College London

Dr. Laura Bovo is the Innovation Networks Manager at UCL Innovation & Enterprise. Her role is to facilitate, enable and support academics and researchers across disciplines to interact with groups of businesses and other stakeholders. Strategic areas of interest in key industry sectors include pharmaceuticals, high value manufacturing, creative industries and the built environment. Laura is a chemist by training, with almost a decade’s experience of academic research in magnetism. She holds a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Padova, Italy, and worked as a researcher at the London Centre for Nanotechnology at UCL from 2011 to 2018. Laura is a member of the Institute of Physics and of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and sits on group committees for both institutions.