Project team

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Ibrahim is a Reader in Safety-Critical Systems and the Deputy Head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of York with responsibility for research. He co-leads the research activities of the £12M Lloyd’s Register Foundation Assuring Autonomy International Programme (AAIP). He is also an investigator on the TAS Node in Resilience (REASON) and the Marie Curie H2020 doctoral training program Safer Autonomous Systems.

In 2015, he was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Fellowship and collaborated with the NHS on evidence-based methods for assuring complex digital interventions. His research on the assurance of critical and autonomous systems has spanned multidisciplinary collaborations including with clinical medicine, law, economics, and ethics. He has obtained grants from the EPSRC, Lloyd’s Register Foundation, NHS, EU, and industry, and sits on safety standards committees including at BSI and MISRA.

Annette is a political philosopher working on the ethics and politics of AI and machine learning. They are a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Philosophy at the University of York and a Technology and Human Rights Fellow at Harvard University. Before that, they were a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, with a joint appointment at the Center for Human Values and the Center for Information Technology Policy. Annette holds a DPhil from Nuffield College at the University of Oxford.

John has been Professor of Software Engineering at the University of York since 1987. He has run many industry-university collaborations (e.g. with Rolls-Royce) and now directs the AAIP, which focuses on the assurance and regulation of robotics and autonomous systems. He has advised companies and government agencies worldwide, including FiveAI and the MoD in the UK, NASA and the NRC in the USA, and major companies such as Bombardier and Rolls-Royce internationally. He has acted as an expert witness in several cases involving safety of complex systems, thus has knowledge of the law “in action”. He is also a Non-Executive Director of the Health and Safety Executive.

Phillip is a Reader in Law at the University of York. He specialises in tort law, particularly vicarious liability, and autonomous system accidents. His current funded projects include the ERC H2020 Robotics for Inspection and Maintenance, and the White Rose AI Law and Ethics. Phillip is co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Handbook of Private Law and Artificial Intelligence (CUP), and editor of Tort Liability and Autonomous Systems Accidents (Edward Elgar) (forthcoming).

His work has been cited with approval by the High Court of Australia, the Supreme Court of Ireland, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, (amongst others), and also by government bodies and reports in the UK, Switzerland, and Australia. 

Paul is Anniversary Professor of Philosophy at the University of York with particular interests in causation, philosophy of mind and action. He has recently published A Variety of Causes (OUP, 2020) providing the most substantial recent defence of a counterfactual theory of causation, covering, amongst other things, the identification of causes, and issues relating to responsibility.

He has also published on issues of causation, mental causation and action in major philosophical journals like Mind, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Analysis, and co-edited with Phil Dowe, Cause and Chance (Routledge, International Library of Philosophy, 2004). He held a Major Leverhulme Research Fellowship 2006-9.

Zoe is a Research Associate with the Assuring Autonomy International Programme in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York, having completed her PhD in the Department of Philosophy. Zoe has research interests in moral responsibility and the ethical assurance of AI and autonomous systems.

She was previously Chief Speechwriter at the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Dr Philippa Ryan is a research fellow with the Assuring Autonomy International Programme and the Assuring Responsibility for Trustworthy Autonomous Systems project at the University of York.

She has worked in the field of safety-critical software engineering for over 20 years, both in academia and industry. She has extensive research experience in software assurance, certification and safety cases. She previously worked in industry writing assurance cases and examining software safety, including for nuclear, defence, medical and AI/ML domains. She is currently chair of the Safety Critical Systems Club working group developing guidance for assuring autonomous systems. Her PhD examined safety analysis of operating systems and she is a chartered engineer.