Meet Professor Mark Plumbley – new Head of Informatics

Congratulations on the new appointment, how does it feel to be the new Head of Department for Informatics?

I'm very excited to join King's and the Department of Informatics. My first lecturing post was at King's until about 25 years ago, but so much has changed since then. Informatics is quite a large department, with expertise in areas ranging from algorithms, software and cybersecurity to AI, planning and human-centred computing, so there are many people to meet and a lot to learn!

What are your priorities for the first six months as Head of Department?

The Department has gone through a rapid expansion over the last few years, with many new students and staff joining recently, and we still have more posts to fill. I want to help shape a strong Department for the next 5 years and beyond, and support our staff and students to build their future careers.

As a first step, I'm in the middle of a series of 1-1 meetings with almost 90 academic staff, learning about our current teaching and research, about the things we already do well, and ideas for areas where we could improve.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and career to date, as well as a few highlights?

I first joined King's back in 1991, in the Centre for Neural Networks, a pioneering cross-department Centre in the technology underpinning the current AI revolution. I was originally based in the Maths department, then moved to what was then Computer Science, and finally to Electronic Engineering. I then moved to Queen Mary University of London, later becoming Director of the Centre for Digital Music, before moving to the University of Surrey in 2015.

For a long time my research interest has been in audio, and I'm just completing an EPSRC Fellowship in "AI for Sound". While at Queen Mary, together with researchers in my group and in IRCAM in Paris, I founded the first Detection and Classification of Acoustic Scenes and Events (DCASE) challenge, which has been running as an annual data challenge and workshop for the last decade.

If you could only take one piece of music, one tool and one famous celeb (alive or dead) to a desert island, who or what would you take and why?

As a choral singer it's hard to pick just one piece of music, but I may go with something well known like Handel's Messiah, to sing along with the recording.

For a tool I'd take a pen and notebook set, with unending supply of ink and paper, to write down ideas and perhaps even learn to sketch.

For a famous celebrity, at least famous in computing circles, I'd say Claude Shannon. As the inventor of information theory, that so much of modern computing and communications is based on, I'd look forward to many interesting conversations!