Turing Institute elects new Fellows

Psychologists and neuroscientists are among the new Fellows who have been elected to the Turing Institute. This year Fellowships have for the first time been opened to eight other universities beyond the founding five, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, Warwick and UCL.

The Turing Institute was created as the national institute for data science in 2015 and has just entered its third academic year. The academics elected as Fellows spend a portion of their time working at the institute on research concerning data, artificial intelligence and its broad range of applications, for example in healthcare or in increasing the transparency of algorithms and making them more ethical.

New Fellows from the University of Birmingham included Director at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics Professor Uta Noppeney and Dr Matthew Brett who has worked in brain imaging analysis, neurology and cognitive psychology.

Dr Tristan Bekinschtein, from the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute and Dr Jason Rentfrow, a reader in personality and individual differences, both from the University of Cambridge, also began their Fellowships in the autumn. Dr Faisal Mushtaq (University of Leeds) who uses techniques from cognitive neuroscience to investigate perception, action and cognition interaction, is another new Fellow. Also from the University of Leeds, Professor of Cognitive Psychology Mark Mon-Williams has also been elected.

Academics with a psychological background from Queen Mary University of London also become Fellows. They are Dr Elisabetta Versace, a Lecturer in Psychology who researches the foundations of knowledge and evolution of behaviour, and Dr Magda Osman who researches decision making, learning, problem solving and biases.