The Turing Podcast
60 episodes - English - Latest episode: 11 days ago -The Turing Podcast is an exciting podcast from The Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence.
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Episodes
Our AI Futures - Lord Chris Holmes and the AI Bill
April 16, 2024 15:00 - 33 minutes - 45.5 MBOn this episode of The Turing Podcast Bea and Anneca are joined by Lord Chris Holmes, Britain’s most successful Paralympic swimmer and an active member of the House of Lords with a policy focus on digital technology for public good. Connect with Lord Holmes on Linked In Explore our regular news AI news podcast, too long didn't read
Project Bluebird: Revolutionising Air Traffic Control with AI and digital twins
January 30, 2024 13:03 - 55 minutes - 76.5 MBThe Turing Podcast revisits Project Bluebird; a fascinating collaboration aiming to solve some of the biggest and most complex problems in air traffic control with digital twins and AI. Join Ed as he sits down with Nick Pepper of The Alan Turing Institute, George De Ath of the University of Exeter and Marc Thomas of NATS - the team behind Project Bluebird. First featured on our podcast in 2020, the team now provides a progress update at the midpoint mark. Learn how they are developing inno...
AI for Cyber Defence
December 21, 2023 12:00 - 52 minutes - 41.8 MBThis week the podcast, the hosts are joined by Kate Highnam and Myles Foley, both of whom are PhD candidates at Imperial College London working at the intersection of machine learning and cyber security. Kate and Myles were part of a team who last year won the CAGE challenge (Cyber Autonomy Gym for Experimentation), with their reinforcement learning-based solution. We chat about how advances in AI are being used to address challenges in cyber security, and what can and cannot be automated.
Building Digital Tools for Polar Research
December 15, 2023 14:00 - 39 minutes - 31.6 MBThis week on The Turing Podcast we chat about some of the research going on in the collaborations between the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and The Alan Turing Institute, including efforts to automate the route planning of ships in polar regions, and the building of a digital twin for Antarctica! The hosts are joined by Dr Scott Hosking and Dr Jonathan Smith. Scott is Co-Director for the Alan Turing Institute Research and Innovation Cluster in Digital Twins, as well as the founder and lead...
Data Science for the Arts and Humanities
December 01, 2023 16:00 - 50 minutes - 46.3 MBThis week the hosts chat with Dr Katie McDonough and Dr Daniel Wilson. Katie is a lecturer in Digital Humanities in the Department of History at Lancaster University and a Senior Research Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute. Daniel is a Turing Research Fellow and historian of science and technology. The episode covers their research at the Turing and the growing intersection between the worlds of data science and the humanities and arts, with a focus on the MapReader software developed explo...
Algorithmic Justice
November 24, 2023 16:45 - 52 minutes - 71.5 MBIn the first episode of The Turing Podcast season 4, the hosts are joined by Cari Hyde-Vaamonde, a PhD candidate at Kings College London and visiting lecturer in law. The episode discusses the field of Algorithmic Justice and Cari's work modelling the decision making process of judges.
How do we regulate AI?
July 21, 2023 14:00 - 53 minutes - 74.2 MBArtificial Intelligence has transformed the way we interact with technology, from voice assistants to autonomous vehicles. As the development and implementation of AI continues to grow at pace, the question of regulation is absolutely key. Join Bea and Anneca as they discuss the ramifications of the EU's AI regulations framework with the Turing's Ray Eitel-Porter and Florian Ostmann.
Diagnosing Dementia with AI
June 05, 2023 16:00 - 27 minutes - 25.2 MBJoin Bea and Anneca as they discuss the potential and current AI tools being used around treating and diagnosing illnesses such as dementia, with Zoe Kourtzi. Zoe is Professor of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. Her research aims to develop predictive models of neurodegenerative disease and mental health with translational impact in early diagnosis and personalised interventions.
Making the world add up with Tim Harford
May 09, 2023 13:30 - 1 hour - 57.4 MBIn this week’s Turing Podcast, Ed chats with Tim Harford about the themes from his 2020 book “How to Make the World Add Up”, which include thinking about the ways statistics and numbers are (mis)used in the media and what we can do about it. Tim is an economist and presenter of the BBC radio show “More or less”.
The Coffee Pod - Hussein Rappel
April 21, 2023 15:30 - 15 minutes - 13.9 MBWelcome to the Coffee Pod! A short series about the Turing's AI for Science and Government fund, that gives you the chance to hear about the people behind the project. Each episode you’ll be listening to a different colleague, their background, career and most importantly… how they like their coffee. In this episode, Bea is speaking to Hussein Rappel. Hussein has worked on the PDRA on Digital Twins in Infrastructure and Construction project in the Complex Systems Engineering theme.
The Coffee Pod - Tom Andersson
April 21, 2023 15:30 - 17 minutes - 15.9 MBWelcome to another episode of the Coffee Pod Podcast! A short series about the Turing's AI for Science and Government fund, that gives you the chance to hear about the people behind the project. Each episode you’ll be listening to a different colleague, their background, career and most importantly… how they like their coffee. In this episode, Bea catches up with Tom Andersson, a data scientist. Tom's worked on the Turing/British Antarctic Survey on Environmental models: Bridging the spat...
The Coffee Pod - Malvika Sharan
April 21, 2023 15:30 - 15 minutes - 14 MBWelcome to another Coffee Pod episode! A short series about the Turing's AI for Science and Government fund, that gives you the chance to hear about the people behind the project. Each episode you’ll be listening to a different colleague, their background, career and most importantly… how they like their coffee. Today Bea is speaking to Malvika Sharan, a senior researcher. Malvika works on Open Research in the Tools, Practices and Systems theme.
The Coffee Pod - Fernando Benitez
April 21, 2023 15:30 - 17 minutes - 15.8 MBWelcome to another Coffee Pod episode! A short series about the Turing's AI for Science and Government fund, that gives you the chance to hear about the people behind the project. Each episode you’ll be listening to a different colleague, their background, career and most importantly… how they like their coffee. In this episode, Bea is joined with Fernando Benitez, a research associate. Fernando worked on PDRA - the Spatial Modelling project in the Shocks and the Resilience cross-theme ...
The Coffee Pod - Domenic DiFrancesco
April 21, 2023 15:30 - 12 minutes - 11.8 MBWelcome to another episode of the Coffee Pod podcast! A short series about the Turing's AI for Science and Government fund, that gives you the chance to hear about the people behind the project. Each episode you’ll be listening to a different colleague, their background, career and most importantly… how they like their coffee. Joining Bea this week is Domenic DiFrancesco, a Turing Research Fellow. Domenic's worked on the project PDRA Digital Twins for Fleets and Supply Chain Management in...
How to Speak Whale
April 14, 2023 15:10 - 51 minutes - 47.1 MBFollowing Tom Mustill’s popular Turing Lecture at the Royal Institution, How to Speak Whale, Tom joins Bea and Jo to catch up on the latest advancements in communication between humans and animals. This lively edition of the Turing podcast covers a great variety of subjects, including some of Tom’s favourite (and surprising) whale facts, and whether attempting to chat with aliens should be prioritised over speaking with animals. A biologist and filmmaker, Tom has recently also turned write...
The Coffee Pod - Ruoyun Hui
April 06, 2023 15:40 - 15 minutes - 14 MBWelcome to the first Coffee Pod episode! A short series about the Turing's AI for Science and Government fund, that gives you the chance to hear about the people behind the project. Each episode you’ll be listening to a different colleague, their background, career and most importantly… how they like their coffee. Joining podcast host Bea this week is Ruoyun Hui, a postdoctoral research associate at The Alan Turing Institute. This series is hosted by Bea Costa Gomes and produced by Luc...
AI in the financial sector
March 10, 2023 13:40 - 1 hour - 60.6 MBWith Dr Adrian Weller (Programme Director and Turing Fellow) and Kate Platonova (Group Chief Data Analytics Officer at HSBC), Ed Chalstrey discusses how AI is being used in financial services and what data is useful in banking today.
The Stats Gap
February 24, 2023 17:55 - 34 minutes - 31.7 MBJoin Ed and David as they speak to Ellen Pasternack, a PHD student in evolutionary biology at the University of Oxford. Ellen is a science writer for UnHerd and Works in Progress. In this episode, we’re going to chat about one of her most recent articles, "The Stats Gap", which explores the issues with statistical education for university scientists.
How much can we limit the rising of the seas?
January 30, 2023 16:21 - 48 minutes - 44.5 MBJoin Aoife and Sally as they chat to Dr Tamsin Edwards about how she uses AI to predict rising sea levels, following her Turing Lecture at the Royal Institution. Tamsin is a climate scientist, specialising in the uncertainties of climate model predictions, particularly for ice sheets and glaciers. Within her research, she also uses information about past climates to improve predictions for the future. In this podcast, we will be catching up with her as she answers some of the questions t...
Where next for self-driving vehicles?
January 17, 2023 17:50 - 34 minutes - 31.7 MBJoin Aoife and Torty as they chat with Professor Sarah Sharples about the current state of technology and AI around driverless vehicles. Sarah (chief scientific advisor for the department for transport) recently did a Turing lecture at the Royal Institution, discussing the topic. In this podcast, she’ll be answering a range of different questions from the evening.
Footballers on Twitter: What is fair game?
December 12, 2022 10:20 - 56 minutes - 51.7 MBThis week we are joined by Manchester United women's footballer Aoife Mannion, Author and CEO of Glitch Seyi Akiwowo and Turing Researcher Pica Johansson to discuss online abuse suffered by football players and other athletes online. The Turing recently partnered with OfCom, who comissioned a report in relation to its upcoming role as the UK’s Online Safety regulator tracking abuse on Twitter against football players in the 2021-22 Premier League Season. You can read more on this report here...
Turing deployment at sea: identifying plankton in real time
November 16, 2022 10:34 - 47 minutes - 43.6 MBIn this episode, hosts Bea and Anneca are joined by Robert Blackwell, from CEFAS (Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science), who tells us, among many other things, how an algorithm to detect different species of plankton developed in two weeks during a Turing DSG ended up being deployed six months later on a ship.
Machine Learning for Armed Conflict Mediation
September 27, 2022 14:21 - 1 hour - 58.2 MBThis week we welcome Dr Miguel Arana-Catania and Professor Rob Procter from the University of Warwick, along with Dr Felix-Anselm van Lier from Oxford University. The episode discusses their recent work in using machine learning to analyze large-scale peace dialogue transcripts from the war in Yemen, with the aim to assist conflict mediators.
Living with Machines
August 05, 2022 10:16 - 51 minutes - 47.4 MBThis week the hosts are joined by David Beavan, a Senior Research Software Engineer and Dr Kasra Hosseini a Research Data Scientist, both of whom work in the Alan Turing Institute’s Research Engineering Group. The episode focusses on one of The Alan Turing Institute’s major research projects in the Digital Humanities known as “Living with machines”, which takes a fresh look at the history of the industrial revolution with data driven approaches. Find out more at https://livingwithmachines.ac...
Data Science for Social Good: Predicting air pollution in a post-COVID world?
June 10, 2022 16:01 - 55 minutes - 51.1 MBIn this episode Christina catches up with two of her former collaborators, Prithviraj Pramanik and Dr. Subhabrata Majumdar. The three of them worked as volunteers at Solve for Good (a platform to connect social good organizations with volunteer data scientists to solve socially beneficial challenges). The team discusses their work with UNICEF to build a post-pandemic global air pollution model to help map child exposure to harmful air pollutants.
The right to privacy
February 18, 2022 16:15 - 1 hour - 75.6 MBThis week Ed and Rachel speak with Geoff Goodell, Senior Research Associate in the Financial Computing and Analytics group at University College London, and associate of UCL’s Centre for Blockchain Technologies and the LSE systemic risk centre. Geoff is an advocate for privacy as a human right in the digital world, in particular with regard to digital identity systems. Recorded in mid-2021, this episode takes a deep dive into some of the important topics surrounding people’s identities in th...
The Turing Podcast asks: Where is Bitcoin headed?
February 01, 2022 12:11 - 1 hour - 83.7 MBEd & Rachel are joined by Dr Tim Hobson, Senior Research Software Engineer and resident Bitcoin enthusiast at The Alan Turing Institute! Tim offers his take on the phenomenon that is Bitcoin, the future of its adoption and how the underlying technology relates to his research interests.
Careers in data science with Accenture
November 26, 2021 01:00 - 50 minutes - 46.2 MBThe latest episode of the Turing Podcast features a special roundtable discussion with our strategic partner Accenture about career options in the data science sector. The latest episode of the Turing Podcast features a special roundtable discussion with our strategic partner Accenture about career options in the data science sector. Our hosts Jo Dungate and Bea Costa Gomes were joined by three influential figures in AI and data science - Henrietta Ridley (Data Science Manager at Accenture)...
”The problems of AI” with James Geddes
November 05, 2021 16:37 - 1 hour - 58.8 MBThis week on The Turing Podcast, the hosts chat with Dr James Geddes, who is a Principial Research Data Scientist in the Research Engineering Group at the Alan Turing Institute. The discussion revolves around an all-important question: What actually is AI? James breaks down three categories of computer programs that could be considered AI: Simulations, Symbolic AI and Machine Learning, and the hosts debate which, if any of these, are really intelligent! This week the podcast is hosted by Ed ...
You don’t need anybody’s permission to be a great mathematician
October 15, 2021 13:38 - 22 minutes - 20.7 MBIn this episode we talk to Dr Nira Chamberlain, president of The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. We talk with Nira about Black History Month, mathematicians though history that have inspired him, and how mathematics can cross racial, geographical and cultural boundaries.
Nicol Turner Lee: Bridging the digital divide
October 08, 2021 15:58 - 53 minutes - 48.9 MBThe hosts were joined by Dr. Nicol Turner Lee to discuss her research on public policy, designed to enable equitable access to technology and digital equity. We talk about themes in her recent book on the Digitally Invisible and the real-life consequences of the growing digital divide. Nicol Turner Lee is a speaker, author and technology innovator. As well as a senior fellow in Governance Studies and Director of the Centre for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution in Washingt...
How to communicate science to non-specialists
September 24, 2021 07:43 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBWe chat about all things science communication with two Turing colleagues: Ethics Research Fellow Mhairi Aitken and Science Writer James Lloyd. They discuss why we need science communicators in the first place, what makes for good communication, and what specific challenges are associated with communicating data science and AI research to the general public.
Tackling the Infodemic
August 06, 2021 16:53 - 1 hour - 63.5 MBThis week on the podcast, we bring you a conversation the hosts had last December with PhD candidate Elizabeth Seger. Elizabeth studies at The University of Cambridge and is a research assistant at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Talking about her work with The Alan Turing Institute, she explains how informed decision making in democracies is being impacted by modern technology, and in particular how online misinformation has affected the pandemic response. Find out mor...
How can AI help us understand breast cancer
July 23, 2021 15:32 - 52 minutes - 48.3 MBIn this episode hosts Jo Dungate and Rachel Winstanley speak to Andrew Holding, a Senior Research Associate at Cancer Research UK's (CRUK) Cambridge Institute and Turing Fellow. Andrew discusses how his research is using machine learning to understand the biology that underlies breast cancer to help improve treatments.
Palaeoanalytics: Using Data Science and Machine Learning to answer questions about Human Evolution
July 09, 2021 20:09 - 1 hour - 64.4 MBThe hosts chat with to Professor Robert Foley, who works on Human Evolution at the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of The Alan Turing Institute. The conversation takes a broad view of how our understanding of human evolution has changed in recent decades and focusses in on the Turing institute’s Palaeoanalytics project, which involves applying data science and machine learning methods to non-genomic data. Find out more about this project here: https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/resear...
How good is AI at detecting online hate?
July 02, 2021 14:59 - 58 minutes - 53.4 MBAI is widely lauded as a way of reducing the burden on human online content moderators. However, to understand whether AI could, and should, replace human moderators, we need to understand its strengths and limitations. In this episode our hosts speak to the researchers Paul Röttger and Bertie Vidgen to discuss how they are attempting to tackle online hate speech, in particular through their work on HateCheck - a suite of tests for hate speech detection models.
Optimizing Policy for Sustainable Development
May 25, 2021 14:03 - 54 minutes - 49.7 MBIn an interview recorded last year, Jo & Ed are joined by Dr Omar A Guerrero, an Economist & Computational Social Scientist at The Alan Turing Institute & UCL Department of Economics, whose research focusses on economic behaviour and institutions from an interdisciplinary angle. The episode focusses on Policy Priority Inference (PPI); a technology developed in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme. PPI is intended to be used to optimise government policy to meet sustain...
Covid lockdowns: which policies worked best?
April 28, 2021 13:24 - 1 hour - 53.9 MBThis week on the podcast, the hosts are joined by Sören Mindermann & Mrinank Sharma who are PhD students from Oxford University. Mrinank works as part of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, whilst Sören is a member of Oxford Applied and Theoretical Machine Learning Group and the episode focuses on the research they've recently had published on inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against Covid-19, during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. You can find the research ...
In conversation with Sue Black
March 08, 2021 12:32 - 1 hour - 59.8 MBIn this episode the hosts were joined by Professor Sue Black to discuss her inspirational life story and career, as well as the initiatives she has set up to encourage more women into the tech sector and her hopes for the future. Sue Black is a Professor of Computer Science and Technology Evangelist at Durham University, has set up initiatives such BCS women and the social enterprise Tech mums, to encourage more women into computing and has received an OBE for ‘Service to technology’. She ...
Mapping the UK's Solar Power
March 04, 2021 10:48 - 1 hour - 64.4 MBThis week the hosts chat with Dr Dan Stowell, senior researcher at Queen Mary University of London and fellow of The Alan Turing Institute, about his work on addressing climate change via creating high-coverage open dataset of solar photovoltaic installations in the UK. It also happens to be research that podcast host Ed was involved in as you'll hear! You can check out the paper on this topic, published in Nature Scientific Data here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-00739-0
Robert Winston on science & the public in the Covid era
February 23, 2021 00:22 - 1 hour - 64.1 MBOn this episode of the podcast, we are joined by Lord Robert Winston to talk about engaging with the public about the science of combatting Covid-19. Professor of Science and Society and Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College London, Robert has also had an incredible career in television, presenting the BBC’s The Secret Life of Twins, Child of Our Time and the BAFTA award-winning The Human Body. Professor Winston runs a research programme at the Institute of Reproducti...
AlphaFold & Beyond: How AI and Data Science are Revolutionizing Biology
December 18, 2020 20:25 - 1 hour - 62.2 MBThis week the hosts are joined by Professor Tim Hubbard, who is Head of the Department of Medical & Molecular Genetics at King’s College London, and Associate Director of Health Data Research UK in London, as well as being the Head of Genome Analysis at Genomics England. They discuss the recent success of Deep Mind's AlphaFold protein structure prediction software at the CASP14 competition and other developments from the worlds of health data science and genomics.
The Dark Triad: Modelling Psychopathy
December 04, 2020 17:55 - 1 hour - 58.7 MBOn the first episode of season 2, we are joined by Alexander Tokarev, a very recent PhD graduate from the University of Manchester. Alex does research in Organizational Psychology, Personality Psychology, and Psychometrics. With a strong mathematical and statistical background, he applies these to psychology. He is here to tell us a little bit about modelling personality traits, in particular the ones known as the dark core. Sound effects courtesy of Brand Name Audio
The Privacy Collective
October 09, 2020 08:58 - 1 hour - 63.3 MBEver wondered what you were signing up to when you click the “Accept all cookies” button that seems to appear on every new website you visit? In the final episode of The Turing Podcast Series One, the hosts are joined by Dr Rebecca Rumbul to talk about The Privacy Collective, an organization that supports compensation claims arising out of the misuse of personal data on behalf of the general public, and how they're involved in with the largest data privacy case against GDPR breaches in histo...
Project Odysseus: Capturing city activity to help exit lockdown
October 01, 2020 10:59 - 39 minutes - 36.2 MBThis week on The Turing Podcast, the hosts chat with James Walsh, a research assistant at The Alan Turing Institute, and Funmi Kesa, a PhD student at the University of Warwick, and hear about their work on “Project Odysseus”, one of The Alan Turing Institute’s key research projects in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. By capturing activity in London to better understand 'busyness', the research aims to aid effective policy-making strategies for exiting lockdowns.
Reproducible data science: How hard can it be?
September 24, 2020 17:38 - 1 hour - 60.3 MBThe ability to reproduce the research that other scientists have done to see whether the same results are obtained (or the same conclusions are reached) is an integral part of the scientific process, but are we doing it right and how difficult is it to do? This week, Ed is joined by Dr Kirstie Whittaker and Dr Sarah Gibson for a discussion about the reproducibility of scientific research, why this is such an important topic and what The Alan Turing Institute is doing to promote best practice...
Digital Identity: Can we trust it?
September 15, 2020 22:18 - 1 hour - 56.3 MBToday, September 16th, is International Identity Day! To mark the occasion, the hosts are joined by Carsten Maple, who is Professor at the University of Warwick and Fellow of The Alan Turing Institute, for a conversation about the trustworthiness of digital identity systems, some of the related work going on at the institute and other “open” initiatives in the digital identity research space. Identification has come a long way since the 1990s when paper-based registries and documents, such a...
Being an Epidemiologist in 2020
August 14, 2020 15:40 - 1 hour - 95.3 MBThis week on The Turing Podcast we're joined for a second time by Alan Turing Institute fellow Dr Peter Tennant of the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, for a discussion about the scientific communities' response to the Covid19 pandemic. Peter is an expert not only in data science, but also Epidemiology and causal inference. The discussion took place in June when fewer of the UK’s lockdown restrictions had been lifted.
Data journalism in the Covid19 era
August 05, 2020 11:51 - 1 hour - 89.1 MBThis week The Turing Podcast welcomes our second external guest interviewee: Tom Chivers. Tom is a science writer and journalist who has previously worked for the Daily Telegraph and Buzzfeed UK, but now writes for the online publication UnHerd. His writing often focusses on topics such as rationalism and Artificial Intelligence and he has authored a popular science book titled: "The AI Does Not Hate You: Superintelligence, Rationality and the Race to Save the World". In this episode, the di...
Antibody Certificates for COVID-19?
July 28, 2020 09:26 - 44 minutes - 35.3 MBOn the podcast this week, the hosts chat with Dr Chris Hicks and Dr David Butler, who work as post-doctoral researchers in security and cryptography at The Alan Turing Institute. In an episode that focusses on one of the projects the institute has undertaken to help tackle the pandemic, they discuss how to build a privacy-preserving system for issuing and verifying Covid19 antibody certificates, a technology that could be used to help with the easing of pandemic measures in some scenarios. I...