Prof James Goulding
Professor in Data Science, with over 100 internationally peer-reviewed publications. N/Lab co-founder, and a trusted coordinator of large, international research projects with over £19m of funding since 2015, working in: AI; COVID; Respiratory Diseases; Poverty Analysis; FGM & Modern Slavery; Food Insecurity; Transport;
Prof Andrew Smith
Prof of Consumer Behaviour & Analytics, Andrew has extensive expertise in consumer decision making and the analysis of consumption patterns. He has published widely numerous papers on the topic and been involved in a number of funded projects. He is the author of Consumer Behaviour & Analytics
Dr Gavin Smith
Associate Professor in temporal data mining and machine learning, with particular focus on development of novel data driven approaches to predict human behaviour in time series. He also researches how to ensure that techniques are applicable in real world scenarios, producing interpretable results.
Dr John Harvey
Associate Professor with expertise in network science and consumer behaviour. John’s recent research focuses on the use of aggregated behavioural data to address social issues, particularly through the use of loyalty card and telecommunications data. His work is widely published and he has received extensive funding from ESRC, EPSRC, and Innovate UK for his work in food security.
Dr Evgeniya Lukinova
Assistant Professor in Behavioural Analytics, focusing on choices humans make every day and how factors, such as scarcity, stress, or social pressure, can alter behaviour - using tools from statistics, game theory, brain-imaging and economic, psychology, and neuroscience theory to investigate mechanisms underlying impatient and environmentally unfriendly consumer choices.
Dr Georgiana Nica-Avram
Assistant Professor in Business Analytics, with a background in machine learning, social marketing and consumer science - developing methods that combine AI techniques with qualitative research to better understand the people behind Big Data, in particular how individuals’ digital traces can help us to better understand experience of Food Poverty.
Dr Roberto Mansilla
Assistant Professor in Marketing Analytics, Roberto’s research uses loyalty card data to understand health trajectories and consumer behaviours, developing new data science methods in Information Theory and Variable Importance Analysis. His latest focus is on using big data to examine diet changes and nutrient intakes over time.
Research Team
Dr Elizabeth Dolan
Elizabeth’s research is developing a framework for Personal Data Donation, specifically asking: how can personal transactional data be collected and analysed for the purposes of health research in a way that is acceptable to society, works for infectious and chronic disease, and can be successfully implemented in a clinical setting?
Dr Daniel Fletcher
Daniel researches as part of the CDAT project at N/Lab, and is a Research Fellow in Psychology, working in analysis of loyalty card transactional data combined with psychological surveys has given new insights into people’s understanding of the environmental impact of the food they eat -and where misperceptions lie.
daniel.fletcher@nottingham.ac.uk
Dr Weiyao Meng
Weiyao Meng is a KTP Associate at N/Lab working with Strategic Innovation (SI) on the use of Natural Language Processing to advance consumer research. Weiyao has a PhD in Computer Science researhiing machine learning, evolutionary computation, automated algorithm design for sustainable development, particularly in food systems.
Dr Gavin Long
Gavin’s background is in computational and geospatial research, and he develops AI models to interrogate how smart data streams such as shopping and mobility data can serve as proxies to shed light on hidden inequality dynamics across the UK, from respiratory disease to nutrition. He also works on geospatial visualisations and 3D representations of machine learning outputs.
Dr Jo Parkes
Assistant Professor at University of Nottingham’s Ningbo campus, Jo is a multidisciplinary social scientist whose work sits at the intersection of human behaviour, technology, and data. Her work on analysis of binge watching via iPlayer data combines quantitative and qualitative methods to understand contemporary social phenomena from digital media habits.
Dr Neo Poon
Neo is a behavioural data scientist and Senior Research Associate based at University of Bristol Medical School, focusing on understanding personality traits from massive transactional data and predicting sociopolitical behaviours. His interests cover a range of topics related to human decision making, including consumer choices and public opinion.
Dr Yang Bong
Yang’s research combines both quantitative ML and qualitative methods. He is studying the use, limitations, and possibilities of peer-to-peer digital marketplaces for rural micro-enterprises in developing countries (focusing on Borneo), as well as the evolution of circular economy networks via big data (in partnership with Olio).
Kuzi Makokoro
Kuzi worked for several years within industry specialising in CRM before starting her PhD exploring consumer behaviour changes during life events. She explores how transitioning into parenthood impacts shopping behaviour and diet decisions. She is currently partnered with Co-op for her research and she is part of the Horizon CDT.
Sam Smith
With a background in Mathematics, Sam’s PhD has researching summarisation techniques for high-dimensional time series. His work develops the concept of ‘life-states’, which describe temporal patterns in time series and allow for meaningful comparisons between individuals’ data - relevant to various domains, but initial applications explore evolution of behavioural data (retail) and consumer opinions (rail)
Albert Nyarko-Agyei
Albert is studying a PhD in novel surveying approaches via statistical graph methods. He also works as part of the Rights Lab on research to estimate the prevalence of modern slavery, in project to deliver the first national prevalence estimates of online sexual exploitation in the Philippines; and techniques for estimating the prevalences of forced child begging in Niger.
albert.nyarko-agyei@nottingham.ac.uk
Keneuoe Maliehe
A geoinformatics expert and PhD researcher at N/Lab and EPSRC CDT in Geospatial Systems, her work focuses on AI in environmental sustainability and geospatial technology. Keneuoe has degrees in GIS, Remote Sensing and Geospatial Data Science and7 years of industry experience in consulting engineering, aerial surveying and GIS. Her research focuses on climate change mitigation strategies via AI, Big Data and Earth observation.
Bogna Liziniewicz
Bogna is a Horizon CDT PhD researcher studying the interactions between loneliness experiences, belonging and social network structures from a social data scientific perspective. Partnering with B:friend, her work focuses on the development of tailored wellbeing interventions catering to the user’s individual needs and preferences.
Raphael Derecki
As part of the N/LAB and the psychology department, Raphael’s research focuses on integrating traditional statistical methods and modern data scientific methods, e.g., machine learning, to further understand important social psychological concepts. His current research focuses on predicting biases, e.g., racial and gender, across the US and researching alcohol consumption across the UK.
Ayisha Dubi
Ayisha is a PhD researcher at N/LAB within the EPSRC CDT in Geospatial Systems. Her research develops a Geointelligent Housing Submarket Classification Framework for England and Wales, integrating spatial analytics, machine learning and housing market data to better understand submarket structures and inequalities.
Ramneek Kaur Athwal
Ramneek is a Horizon CDT PhD student modelling big investment data in relation to gender and race issues in entrepreneurship. Ramneek’s work highlights some of underinvestment in female entrepreneurs and also explores how technology can help bridge this gap and challenge stereotypes.
Chukwudumebi Okeke
Dumebi is a new PhD candidate joining the lab in 2024 who will be investigating Consumer Behaviour in the Retail Beauty Sector, and its impact on social issues.
Yibing Wan
Yibing is a new PhD candidate joining the lab in 2025 investigating how microplastics in food might affect human health.
Ayomide Bammeke
Ayomide is a new PhD candidate who joined the lab in 2025 analysing Over-the-Counter sales data to monitor/detect gastrointestinal infection.
Ammara Latif
Ammara is a new ESRC DTP‐funded researcher who joined the lab in 2025 investigating intention-behaviour gap in sustainable consumption.
Brandon Biba
Brandon is a new ESRC DTP‐funded researcher who joined the lab in 2025 specializing in natural language processing (NLP) and public analysis of psychoactive substances
Hannah Lewis Winter
Hannah is a Senior epidemiologist at WHO with 15 years’ experience in international public health preparedness and response, researching effective and sustainable surveillance for respiratory pathogen outbreak detection in partnership with Pharmacy.
Sarah Wang
Sarah is a PhD student co-supervised at N/Lab, but based at Imperial College London. She is using large scale datasets to model casual game engagement, closely collaborating with King, the makers of Candy Crush.
Alumni Network
Dr Rosa Lavelle-Hill
Rosa is a computational social scientist whose research at N/Lab combined psychological theory with big data and machine-learning methods to better understand human behaviour - using mass dataset, such as consumer, to study issues including wellbeing, environmental behaviour, migration, and modern slavery. She continues leading this field at University of Basel.
Dr Vanja Ljevar
Vanja worked as a fellow in Digital Marketing before completing her multidisciplinary PhD about behavioural change and perceptions. She explored how people’s beliefs impact their behaviour by combining psychology theories and machine learning techniques. She is the Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist at Kubik Intelligence.
Dr Madeleine Ellis
Madeleine’s work combined the fields of mathematics and international development, examining how block-structure models can be extended to produce social good. Her applied work in machine learning ranged from contexts of Perinatal Mortality to FGM and Modern Slavery, leading to her current role at Save the Children
Dr Mark Iliffe
Mark worked at N/Lab combining mass sets of real-time telecommunications data, with open source geospatial information and cutting edge mathematical techniques to generate a range of intelligence layers to support social good in China, Malaysia and Tanzania. He also led N/Lab work on flood modelling before joining United Nations in 2018.
Dr Bertrand Perrat
Dr Bertrand Perrat’s work as assistant professor and geospatial lead at N/Lab focused on geospatial machine learning, and data-driven approaches to societal challenges. His work includes developing advanced positioning and tracking technologies for sports performance analysis through to applying statistical and machine-learning methods to problems such as mapping food insecurity, urban deprivation and modern slavery.
Dr Gregor Engelmann
Gregor’s research examined how mining CDR data can generate Social Good in mobility mapping and urban planning. A specialist in international development analytics, Gregor also worked on the AIDA project, examining child development in Malawi, and as a UAS research consultant with the African Drone Forum/World Bank.
Dr Haixia Liu
Haixia Liu’s work at N/Lab focussed on idea mining. Now at UWE her work focuses on machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision, exploring explores computational creativity, as well as improving deep-learning architectures and explainability to make AI systems more interpretable and effective
haixia.liu@uwe.ac.uk
Dr Gregor Milligan
Gregor’s PhD at the N/LAB examined how large digital and behavioural datasets can be used to measure population wellbeing, particularly loneliness and social isolation. His work uses computational methods and machine learning to analyse proxy data streams - such as digital footprint and mental-health platform data - to understand how deprivation, wellbeing, and social connectedness can model to loneliness at population scale.
G.Milligan@shu.ac.uk
Dr Lara Suraci
A decision scientist working on Exogenous Cognition at N/Lab, Lara’s research focuses on human-computer interactions, in particular the causal determinants of reliance on AI and other novel technologies. Her doctoral research in Behavioural Economics explored task-sensitivity, information provision, and preferences for normative vs preferential algorithms in the context of automation reliance.
Dr Bethany Huntington
Bethany is researching the impact of educational interventions in developing contexts, currently looking at methods to analyse X-Prize data from villages in Northern Tanzania. She is jointly supervised by Psychology, as part of the ESRC Midlands Graduate School Doctoral Training Programme.
Dr Dominic Reedman-Flint
Dominics research focuse on using large digital and behavioural datasets to understand social isolation and loneliness at large scale. His work explored how digital footprint data and human–computer interaction data could be used to detect or measure loneliness, while also examining the ethical and societal implications of emerging technologies.
Dr Rachel Carrington
Rachel has a PhD in statistics, and worked with N/LAb on new methods (AJIVE) fusing data streams such as earth observation imagery with survey and Call data records. She was part of the BEADS programme, and EPSRC project examining Gender Inequality in East Africa, before becoming a Reserach Fellow at Durham University.
Dr Sean Devine
Sean worked with N/LAb as a data psychologist based at McGill University, Canada, employed on the CHOICE project (Otto, Skatova, Goulding), examining the computational mechanisms underpinning effortful choice, and real-world decisions through the lens of big consumer data - focussing on decoy effects and fast moving consumer goods.
seandamiandevine@gmail.com
Zhou Kai
Kai is investigating explainable machine learning methods using real-world time series data. His research focus is on developing temporal feature importance estimation algorithms to understand the phenomenon drift in healthcare and social science.
Associate Academics
Prof Alexa Spence
University of Nottingham, School of Psychology
alexa.spence@nottingham.ac.uk
Prof Tracey Thornley
University of Nottingham, School of Pharmacy
tracey.thornley@nottingham.ac.uk
Dr Ross Otto
McGill University, School of Psychology
ross.otto@mcgill.ca
Dr Simon Welham
University of Nottingham, Faculty of Science
Dr Anya Skatova
University of Bristol / Alan Turing Institute
anya.skatova@bristol.ac.uk
Dr Brian O’Shea
University of Nottingham, Faculty of Science
Prof Nicola Pitchford
University of Nottingham, School of Psychology
nicola.pitchford@nottingham.ac.uk
Prof Lorraine Whitmarsh
University of Bath, School of Psychology
lw2253@bath.ac.uk
Prof Simon Preston
University of Nottingham, School of Mathematics
simon.preston@nottingham.ac.uk
Prof Tim Brailsford
University of Western England
Tim.Brailsford@uwe.ac.uk