David Robertson is Chair of Applied Logic at the University of Edinburgh and Chief Scientific Advisor for Huawei in the UK. He was Head of College of Science & Engineering at Edinburgh. Prior to this he was Head of School of Informatics at Edinburgh, which is the largest UK computing science department in the UK in terms of research power.
His computing research is on Artificial Intelligence, specialising in formal methods for coordination and knowledge sharing between (human/artificial) agents in distributed systems where a high degree of autonomy is expected in the components of the underlying system. This is one of the enablers for AI at large scale. Methods from his group have been applied to astronomy, simulation of consumer behaviour, emergency response and healthcare.
He was a member of the Farr Institute for medical data sharing and was co-director of the Centre for Medical Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. He is currently co-director of the Scottish node for Health Data Research UK (the UK’s national institute for health data science). He chaired the executive of the UK Computing Research Committee (the expert panel of the British Computer Society and the Institution of Engineering and Technology) and has served on strategic advisory groups for the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Medical Research Council and Innovate UK. He was a member of the governance board for the Scottish Innovation Centre in Data Science and he was on the supervisory board for EIT Digital (Europe’s largest digital innovation ecosystem).
