Yarin Gal announced as Turing AI Fellow

Yarin Gal is one of five new Turing AI Fellows announced by The Alan Turing Institute. The Office for Artificial Intelligence, The Alan Turing Institute and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have worked together to successfully attract the Turing AI Fellows, some of the best research talent from around the world.

Yarin will work on democratising safe and robust AI. While already in use in industry and academia, major obstacles still stand in the way of deploying deep learning AI safely and responsibly. Yarin proposes to tackle these problems by building community challenges derived from real-world applications of AI in industry. With the community competing on these public challenges, new safe and robust AI tools will be developed for responsible use in industry.

The Turing AI Fellows, who have been appointed for five years, are drawn from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds and will be tackling research challenges ranging from sustainable aviation to AI for discovery in data intensive astrophysics.

To continue attracting outstanding AI talent, a new call for the Turing AI Acceleration Fellowship will open shortly. In addition, details of the Turing AI World-Leading Researcher Fellowships have also been released and this call will open in early November. Together, both calls have received £37.5 million of investment to support a number of fellows over five years. Further information will be available on UKRI's website. 

Science Minister Chris Skidmore said:

‘AI has the potential to boost productivity and enhance every industry across the economy, from developing new treatments for life-threatening diseases to tackling climate change. Today’s announcement is helping us solve the UK’s Grand Challenges by ensuring the UK is at the forefront of the latest technologies and opening-up British businesses to new opportunities.

‘The UK is a petri-dish for incredible talent and we’re passionate about nurturing the next generation of world-class scientists, so the UK remains at the forefront of research and innovation.

‘That is why we’re investing in the AI and bioscience PhD research. These critical areas will transform the UK economy and create the highly-skilled workforce we need for the future.’

Digital Minister Matt Warman said:

‘The UK has a long-standing reputation for innovation. We are the birthplace of artificial intelligence and home to technology pioneers such as Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace. We are determined to see this continue.

‘Today we are announcing a bumper investment in skills training to strengthen our workforce and attract, nurture and retain the best talent so we can lead the world in research and development.

‘AI is already being used to improve lives by helping detect fraud quicker and diagnose diseases more accurately. With the brightest minds at the helm we will be able to explore this cutting-edge technology further.’

Adrian Smith, Institute Director and Chief Executive of The Alan Turing Institute, said:

‘We look forward to what this talented group of Turing AI Fellows will bring to our vibrant research community and we welcome their contributions to our growing Institute. There is vast potential for their diverse work to be transformative in both the foundations and applications of AI and I am confident they will push the boundaries of what these new technologies can do for the good of society.’