Prof Maria Fasli is the Director of the Institute for Analytics and Data Science and Director of the ESRC Business and Local Government Data Research Centre. She was educated in Greece (BSc Informatics 1996) and obtained her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Essex (2000) for her work on computational logics for intelligent systems. She has held positions at Essex since 1999 and was Head of School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE) between 2009-2014. In 2005, she was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship by the HEA UK for her novel approaches to education and supporting the student experience.
In 2016, she was awarded a UNESCO Chair in Analytics and Data Science whose aim is to work with international collaborators and partners to develop research capacity and skills in data science and analytics for the benefit of society. She has been the founding Director of the Institute for Analytics and Data Science since its foundation in 2014 and has been leading its development into a pan-University multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary institute covering different aspects of data science, analytics and Big Data, from the methodologies and techniques to the socio-economic aspects and legal and ethical implications of the use of analytics and Big Data.
Her research interests lie in artificial intelligence (AI) techniques and modelling structured/unstructured data and she has published over 130 papers in the field of AI and data science. She has led, managed and contributed a number of projects and her work has been funded by Research Councils, InnovateUK, businesses and other organisations (over £8.5M). She has been involved in organising/chairing and reviewing for international events and she has supervised 19 PhD students.