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.
- Prof James Goulding – N/Lab Director
- Prof Andrew Smith – Founding Director
- Dr Georgiana Nica-Avram – Assistant Professor
- Dr Gavin Smith – Associate Professor
- Dr John Harvey – Associate Professor
- Dr Evgeniya Lukinova – Assistant Professor
- Dr Roberto Mansilla – Assistant Professor
- Dr Elizabeth Dolan – Research Fellow
- Dr Gavin Long – Research Fellow
- Dr Weiyao Meng – KTP Fellow
- Dr Neo Poon – Research Fellow
- Dr Lara Suraci – Research Fellow
- Dr Gregor Engelmann– Associate Fellow
- Dr Vanja Ljevar – Associate Fellow
- Dr Rachel Carrington – Associate Fellow
- Dr Paul Haggar – Associate Fellow
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 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 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.
- Bethany Huntington – PhD Researcher
- Jo Parkes – PhD Researcher
- Gregor Milligan – PhD Researcher
- Yang Bong – PhD Researcher
- Sam Smith – PhD Researcher
- Keneuoe Maliehe – PhD Researcher
- Kuzi Makokoro – PhD Researcher
- Zhou Kai – PhD Researcher
- Albert Nyarko-Agyei – PhD Researcher
- Raphael Derecki – PhD Researcher
- Bogna Liziniewicz – PhD Researcher
- Chukwudumebi Okeke – PhD Researcher
- Torty Sivill – Associate PhD Researcher
- Sean Devine – Associate PhD Researcher
- Janine Sey – Research Support Officer
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 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.
Jo Parkes
Jo is examining through behavioural modelling how personal and psychological drivers can frame and shape everyday behaviours, and working with the BBC to also examine how these factors can help enrich digital consumption experiences.
Yang Bong
As part of the Horizon CDT, Yang is studying of the use, limitations, and possibilities of peer-to-peer digital marketplaces for rural micro-enterprises in developing countries, supervised by Dr John Harvey.
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.
Gregor Milligan
Gregor is developing computational research into the insights obtainable about population wellbeing through proxy data streams. He is also partnered with Kooth examining user trajectories on Digital Mental Health Platforms.
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
Sam Smith
Sam has a background in Mathematics and a Horizon PhD researcher at N/Lab, researching summarisation techniques for high-dimensional time series. His work develops the concept of ‘lifestates’, 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)
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.
Bogna Liziniewicz
Bogna is researching people’s experiences of loneliness as well as the structures and dynamics of social networks in digital and offline settings. Partnering with B:friend, her work aims to contribute to the enhanced understanding of loneliness as a wellbeing issue and to the development of innovative digital wellbeing interventions. Bogna is a part of Horizon CDT. Her PhD is supervised by Dr. John Harvey, Dr. James Goulding and Dr. Liz Dowthwaite.
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.
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.
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.
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 Vanja Ljevar
Vanja worked as a Senior Analyst before starting her multidisciplinary PhD about behavioural change and perceptions. She explores 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 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 Gregor Engelmann
Gregor’s research examines how mining CDR data can generate Social Good in mobility mapping and urban planning. A specialist in international development analytics, Gregor is currently working on the AIDA project, examining child development in Malawi, and as a UAS research consultant with the African Drone Forum/World Bank.
Dr Neo Poon
Neo is a behavioural data scientist and also a Senior Research Associate at University of Bristol Medical School. His research focuses on understanding personality traits from massive transactional data and predicting sociopolitical behaviours. His PhD in Behavioural Science (Warwick Business School) covered a range of topics related to human decision making, including consumer choices and public opinions.
Dr Madeleine Ellis
Madeleine’s work combines 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 ranges from contexts of Perinatal Mortality to FGM and Modern Slavery.
Sean Devine
Sean is a data psychologist based at McGill University, Canada working with N/LAB via the CHOICE project (Otto/Skatova/Goulding), examining the computational mechanisms underpinning effortful choice, and real-world decisions through the lens of big consumer data..
Dr Rachel Carrington
Rachel has a PhD in statistics, and works on new methods (AJIVE) fusing data streams such as earth observation imagery with survey and CDT data. She is part of the BEADS programme, and EPSRC project examining Gender Inequality in East Africa
Paul Haggar
Paul is working with N/LAB via the MOCHA project at the University of Cardiff (Whitmarsh), examining how pro-environmental lifestyle changes might be achieved through understanding and harnessing "moments of change" in loyalty card data.
Associate Academics
Prof Alexa Spence
University of Nottingham, School of Psychology
alexa.spence@nottingham.ac.uk
Dr Rosa Lavelle-Hill
University of Copenhagen
rla@psy.ku.dk
Dr Anya Skatova
University of Bristol / Alan Turing Institute
anya.skatova@bristol.ac.uk
Dr Haixia Liu
University of West of England, Bristol, School of Computing
haixia.liu@uwe.ac.uk
Prof Simon Preston
University of Nottingham, School of Mathematics
simon.preston@nottingham.ac.uk
Dr Simon Welham
University of Nottingham, Faculty of Science
Prof Nicola Pitchford
University of Nottingham, School of Psychology
nicola.pitchford@nottingham.ac.uk
Dr Brian O’Shea
University of Nottingham, Faculty of Science
Prof Lorraine Whitmarsh
University of Bath, School of Psychology
lw2253@bath.ac.uk
Prof Tim Brailsford
University of Western England
Tim.Brailsford@uwe.ac.uk
Dr Ross Otto
McGill University, School of Psychology
ross.otto@mcgill.ca
Research Support Team
