Alumni Profiles

Professor Andrew Blake is the first Director of the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science.

"Keep abreast of technology and use the knowledge to guide your ambitions," says Anne, angel investor and CEO of Cunning Systems.

Antonios Katsarakis (PhD 2016–2021) reimagined data replication with invalidation‑based protocols for ultra‑fast, strongly consistent distributed datastores—earning the EuroSys Roger Needham PhD Award Honorable Mention. He’s now a Principal Researcher at Huawei, designing next‑generation databases.

In 2021, Arun graduated with BSc Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science. He tells about studying during the Covid-19 pandemic and the importance of friendship.

MSc graduate Chris Ellis tells us about his reasons for studying at the School of Informatics.

Christopher graduated with Computer Science BSc before completing his PhD and post-doc research at the School. He now leads a large team at the Amazon headquarters in Seattle.

Cigdem Beyan (PhD 2011–2015) developed computer vision and machine learning methods to detect unusual fish behaviors in underwater videos, tackling challenges like imbalanced data and large-scale monitoring. She is now an Associate Professor and co-leads the VISP group at the University of Verona.

Connie Crowe studied Master of Informatics (MInf) and graduated in 2018.

Dimple studied Computer Science with Management and graduated in 2017.

Ebtehal Turki S. Alotaibi (PhD 2020–2025) advanced Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning for autonomous systems, creating adaptable decision-making frameworks for real-world robotics. She is now CEO and CTO of Pixconvey, developing autonomous mobility and delivery platforms in the UK and Saudi Arabia.

Grigori Fursin shares how the city and the university helped to shape his personal and professional life.

In 2018, Hanne graduated with BSc (Hons) Computer Science

Iain Wallace (PhD 2006–2010) researched social reasoning in multi-agent systems, exploring how intelligent agents model and reason about interactions. He is now Technical Director at Faculty, leading teams that deliver cutting-edge AI systems for industry and government.

Jiangming Liu (PhD 2017–2021) researched natural language understanding and generation under discourse representation theory, developing multilingual systems for formal machine-interpretable representations. He is now an Associate Professor advancing AI and language technologies.

In 2018 Kolos Kantor was an alumni ambassador for the School of Informatics at the Post-Offer Visit Day.

MSc and PhD graduate Luna De Ferrari talks about her time at the School of Informatics and why she has stayed in Edinburgh.

Marcio Fonseca (PhD 2020–2024) researched summarisation techniques for long documents, exploring how large language models can generate context-tailored summaries. He is now a Machine Learning Engineer at the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, designing AI solutions for the legislative domain.

Marco Damonte (PhD 2015–2019) researched Natural Language Understanding, advancing methods for interpreting and processing human language. He is now a Machine Learning Scientist at JetBrains, working on AI-powered coding agents.

Michael Mangan, a PhD graduate in Robotics talks about his proudest achievements and how he learnt invaluable lessons in how to bring an idea from the research lab to a commercial product. 

Michael Stam (PhD 2019–2024) developed AI-driven tools for protein design, creating software and machine learning methods to make biomedical innovation more reliable and accessible. He now leads AI and bioinformatics at Biophoundry, tackling global challenges in antimicrobial resistance.

Software engineer Mike McQuaid talks about how Edinburgh stimulated an appetite for learning that has led to a career he loves.

The Director of Stanford Intelligent Systems Laboratory has such fond memories of Edinburgh that he brought students on a study visit.

Nikos Papasarantopoulos (PhD 2016–2019) developed machine learning techniques to represent data from multiple views and modalities, with applications in Natural Language Processing. He is now a Senior Machine Learning Engineer in a Clinical Research Organisation.

Olise Okpala tells us why he chose Edinburgh to do his Masters Degree in Computer Science.

In 2018 Patricia Dragan was an alumni ambassador for the School of Informatics at the Post-Offer Visit Day.

Peter achieved a BSc (Hons) in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science and went on to do his PhD at Informatics too.

Phoenix Huang (PhD 2011–2014) researched multiclass object classification and hierarchical recognition systems, advancing computer vision techniques for large-scale underwater video analysis. He is now an AI Architect, designing enterprise-scale AI systems.

Richard M Marshall, a BSc and PhD graduate in Computer Science tells us about his time at Informatics and how important it is to be passionate about your chosen subject. 

Rohan Gorantla (PhD 2021–2024) developed AI models to predict drug-protein binding strength, enabling large-scale computational screening for drug discovery. He now works at Novartis, applying machine learning to accelerate early-stage drug development.

Software Engineering graduate Stuart Beard talks to us about his time at the School of Informatics and how it led to his career as a software integrator and designer.

Stuart shares with us how his studies at Edinburgh helped shape his life.

In 2021 Theodoros Stouraitis graduated with a PhD in Robotics having completed his MSc in AI in 2016.

Dr Tim Willis studied for an MSc and then a PhD at the School of Informatics and has subsequently gone on to found his own company.

Tom co-founded Fanduel with other Informatics alumni. The company is now valued at over $1 billion.

William Hugh Burrough Smith (PhD 2017–2022) trained robots to navigate autonomously using machine learning, developing methods to recognize places under changing conditions and detect scenes of interest. He is now a Machine Learning Research Engineer, creating advanced AI solutions for real-world applications.