New Chief Scientific Adviser for Essex

Dr Spyros Samothrakis has been selected as the new Chief Scientific Adviser for Essex, ensuring the University's data excellence is again at the forefront of work to transform our county.

This key collaboration between the University and Essex County Council, leads on the use of data science and artificial intelligence to improve public services across Essex. Dr Samothrakis will use his expertise in machine learning and data analysis to investigate issues and find solutions to the problems facing people and families in Essex.

Dr Samothrakis said: "This is an exciting opportunity that will enable me to contribute to the local community, foster better links between local services and the University and support current and future research initiatives in local government and services. It might seem trivial or obvious, but our lives are impacted the most by the physical space around us; we need better roads, better hospital wards, better food, better housing, more trees. To the extent that I can, I will prioritise projects that make a difference in the real world."

The Chief Scientific Adviser role enables the University and Essex County Council to apply expertise in big data and advanced analytics to inform and support decisions and policy development. Together Essex County Council and the University are developing new methods to analyse and interpret data to make evidence-led decisions that will drive the local economy and inform future planning of the county's environmental strategy, transport and infrastructure, public health and wellbeing. Essex is already recognised as a national leader on the use of data to improve services.

Professor Chris Greer, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research, University of Essex, said: "This role is one of huge strategic significance. It enables our university to play its full part as an anchor institution in the region, and a research powerhouse for data analytics. I applaud this appointment and am confident that Spyros will achieve great things for the benefit of the people of Essex."

Chief Executive of Essex County Council, Gavin Jones, said: "The collaboration between the University and the County Council has already reaped rewards in terms of improvements to public services. Embedding data science in our business is vital to ensure we continue to transform our county and I am delighted to welcome Dr Samothrakis to the role and look forward to working closely with him."

Dr Samothrakis is currently the Deputy Director of the Institute for Analytics and Data Science (IADS) and Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex. He is also an Independent Scientific Advisor for BridgeAI at The Alan Turing Institute and has more than 10 years' experience in developing and deploying solutions based on artificial intelligence(AI). His research interests are in machine learning with a focus in out-of-distribution generalisation, meta-learning, causal inference and reinforcement learning. Dr Samothrakis will take up his new appointment from September this year.