I'm delighted to welcome the AI+ Fellows to King's. They bring exactly the mix of curiosity, technical skill and disciplinary diversity that the Institute was created to support. Their energy and ideas will be vital as we explore within the Institute how to do science better with AI and what AI means for the future of work, amongst other initiatives. They will also help deepen King's interdisciplinary AI community and ensure that the Institute's work reflects the full range voices across the university.
Professor Elena Simperl, Co-Director of the King's Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Professor of Computer Science
18 May 2026
King's welcomes AI+ Fellows after global search to shape the future of AI
King's College London has welcomed a cohort of 19 AI+ Fellows, following a highly competitive global search that attracted applications from outstanding researchers across disciplines and continents.

King's College London has welcomed a cohort of 19 AI+ Fellows, following a highly competitive global search that attracted applications from outstanding researchers across disciplines and continents. The AI+ Fellows are the first to be appointed under King's £18 million AI+ investment, created to support researchers who will push the boundaries of how artificial intelligence is used in science, society and the arts.
The AI+ Fellows will tackle questions ranging from how to prevent avoidable deaths and improve cancer care to how AI can reshape musical composition, monitor environmental change and make political debate less polarised.
Their research spans health equity in infectious diseases, epidemic modelling and control systems, AI‑driven cancer assessment, protein interaction studies and microscopy, psychosis and epilepsy, as well as decolonial AI, AI safety, cognitive science, ageing, social impacts of technology, climate and the environment, and humanities‑led approaches to AI.
Each Fellow will spend three years with up to 80 per cent of their time protected for research, giving them the space to develop ambitious research in partnership with departments across King's. The cohort was selected for both research excellence and the potential to act as future leaders who can bridge disciplines and shape responsible uses of AI.
The AI+ Fellows will work closely with the King's Institute for Artificial Intelligence - a central hub for a diverse and growing interdisciplinary community of over 200 AI researchers.
Vice‑Chancellor & President Professor Shitij Kapur said:
"AI will touch every part of society, so it must be shaped by many different voices and disciplines. Our AI+ investment is about building a community of future AI leaders at King's who can accelerate the development and adoption of AI while ensuring it is safe, responsible and beneficial for all."
11 AI+ Fellows have already started their work at King's in 2026. The remaining members of the cohort join over the course of the summer. This is accompanied by AI+ Professorship appointments and continued investment in computing and research infrastructure.
Meet some of the AI+ Fellows and explore their research
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Meet: Dr Eric Orenstein – Building AI to understand a changing, unseen ocean world
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Meet: Dr Liane dos Santos Canas – Reimagining preventative medicine with AI
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Meet: Dr Christopher Banerji – Working to ensure artificial intelligence (AI) serves rather than replaces human expertise in healthcare
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Meet: Dr Robert Laidlow – Discovering what music becomes when AI stops trying to sound human
Further spotlights on AI+ Fellows will be published over the coming months.
Hear directly from King's AI+ Fellows about the research they are undertaking by attending the AI Frontiers events.
Follow the King's Institute for Artificial Intelligence on LinkedIn to receive updates on the AI+ Fellows, and for news and events about AI at King's.
The AI+ Fellows
Dr Vladimir Avetian (King's Business School): Applied microeconomics, urban economics and political economy
Dr Christopher Banerji (Faculty of Life Science & Medicine): Multimodal cancer data for trustworthy insights
Dr Joseph Barnby (Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience): Mental states and AI
Dr Liane dos Santos Canas (Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine): Discovery from large scale imaging data
Dr Ayan Das (Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences): Deep learning for computer vision
Dr Max Falkenberg (Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences): Computational social science, information, polarisation
Dr Daniel Hauke (Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience): Computational Psychiatry for Precision Medicine
Dr Niall Jeffrey (Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences): AI in physics: Problems of high dimensional data and simulation
Dr Matthew Kennedy (Faculty of Arts & Humanities): Evaluation, assurance, sociotechnical perspectives
Dr Robert Laidlow (Faculty of Arts & Humanities): Music: AI and new creative processes
Dr Sabrina Li (Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy): Equitable, intelligent mapping for real-time detection of emerging disease
Dr Vasilios Mavroudis (Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences): Cybersecurity and security AI
Dr Lorenzo Nava (Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy): Landslides and floods: modelling and predicting
Dr Eric Orenstein (Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences): Machine vision applications in environmental science
Dr Kris Parag (Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences): AI / statistics for biological phenomena (eg epidemics)
Dr Georgia Richards (The Dickson Poon School of Law, and the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine): Data driven action on preventable deaths
Dr Richard Rosch (Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience): Multi-level analysis: epilepsy
Dr Jan Christoph Thiele (Faculty of Life Science & Medicine): Transforming protein interaction studies with AI-driven microscopy
Dr Christopher Tomlinson (Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience): Big health data
In this story
Related departments
- King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence
- Faculty of Arts & Humanities
- The Dickson Poon School of Law
- Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine
- Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences
- Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience
- Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy
- King’s Business School
- Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences









