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Emma Hart        

Edinburgh Napier University Professor of Computer Science; AI & Robotics Expert

Emma Hart is a professor of computer science at Edinburgh Napier University, where she leads a research group working on nature-inspired intelligent systems. Many of her algorithms are inspired by evolution and see applications in everything from robotics to optimizing infrastructure design to solving logistics and scheduling challenges. Her work applies ideas from nature to teach machines to autonomously adapt their algorithms over time in response to a changing environment, so they constantly improve their performance.

In 2017, Hart was appointed editor-in-chief of Evolutionary Computation (MIT Press), becoming the journal's first female editor. Recently, she was appointed to the Steering Committee and to a working group that led to the publication of Scotland's AI strategy, which aims to establish Scotland as a leader in the development and use of trustworthy, ethical and inclusive AI. She holds an undergraduate degree in chemistry from University of Oxford and a masters and PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh.

Her work in evolutionary robotics has attracted significant media attention, e.g. in the Guardian, Telegraph and the Conversation.

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