World Leading Research Fellows
Our world-leading visiting research fellows strengthen the methodological frontier of the program, bringing specialist expertise in Bayesian inference, causal AI, probabilistic modelling, optimisation, applied statistical innovation, elicitation, and collective intelligence that is not readily available at the same depth in Australia. Each fellow contributes a distinct perspective shaped by their disciplinary background and strengthens our collective capacity to guide and transform policy and decision-making in complex social and environmental systems.
Professor Pascal Van Henentryck
Pascal Van Hentenryck is the A. Russell Chandler III is Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is Director of the NSF Artificial Intelligence Institute for Advances in Optimization and Director of Tech AI, Georgia Tech’s AI hub. His research focuses on artificial intelligence for engineering and science, especially on the integration of machine learning and optimisation for applications in energy, supply chains, manufacturing, mobility, and healthcare. He has held senior academic and research roles at Brown University, NICTA in Australia and the University of Michigan, and is recognised internationally for major contributions to constraint programming, optimisation and AI. During his fellowship at the Human Technology Institute, UTS, he will give a keynote at the Royal Society of NSW Forum Day, AI: The Hope and the Hype, chaired by Professor Sally Cripps.
Professor Sir Geoff Mulgan
Sir Geoff Mulgan CBE is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London, in UCL’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy team. He has worked across government, civil society, philanthropy, investment and academia, with a focus on how societies solve complex collective problems. He was Chief Executive of Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation, from 2011 to 2019, and previously held senior UK government roles including Director of the Government’s Strategy Unit and Head of Policy in the Prime Minister’s Office. He was also the first Chief Executive of the Young Foundation and co-founder of organisations including Demos, the Social Innovation Exchange and Action for Happiness. His books include Big Mind, Social Innovation, Another World is Possible, and When Science Meets Power. During his fellowship at HTI, Professor Mulgan will link global expertise in public policy innovation, collective intelligence and civic technology with Australian policy, academic and community leaders to advance the practical design and public engagement for a new model for responsive civic infrastructure and government services. This new model is premised on creating more adaptive ‘learning loops’ to strengthen democratic institutions by applying Bayesian learning approaches in connection with digital environments.
Professor JP Gosling
Professor John Paul “JP” Gosling is Professor of Statistics at Durham University and an applied Bayesian statistician whose work focuses on uncertainty quantification, expert judgement and prior elicitation for decision-making under uncertainty. He has developed and applied Bayesian methods across environmental risk, computer modelling, geostatistics and policy-relevant decision problems, and is known for contributions to structured expert elicitation, including work associated with the Sheffield Elicitation Framework.
As a Fellow at the Human Technology Institute, Professor Gosling is contributing his expertise in prior elicitation to the development of causal pathways for school completion. His work supports the translation of expert, practitioner and community knowledge into structured prior information for Bayesian causal models, helping to quantify uncertainty over plausible mechanisms and identify intervention pathways that can inform education decision-making.