Centre for Assured and Connected Autonomy
The official centre website is found here, which is supported by a variety of UKRI, EU, and Defence & Securities funding.
The centre I lead has 30+ staff members. It broadly has 4 areas:
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Air Space Management (Strategic System)
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Human-Machine Connected Intelligence (Edge Tactical),
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Autonomous Systems & Control (Platform GNC)
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Computation Fluid Dynamics (Aerodynamics)
It hosts several national and sector critical labs: 1 of UK's 6G JOINER nodes, 1 of the largest drone arenas, human factors based cockpit & C2, fully integrated UTM/ATM with air traffic control, delivering research capability to UK and UK Plc.
Human Machine Connected Intelligence Group
The human-machine connected intelligence research group in my area is diverse and consists of 15+ members from 7 countries:
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Academic Staff (3):
Yang Xing (Senior Lecturer) - applied AI for engineering
Adolfo Perrusquia (Lecturer) - reinforcement learning for engineering -
Deepak Panda (Lecturer) - secure autonomy
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Research Fellows (2):
Mengbang Zou (EPSRC 6G CHEDDAR, 2026-29) - kinetic resilience of AI-on-RAN
Jinsheng Yuan (EPSRC CHEDDAR 2026-30) - red teaming AI-for-RAN
Recruiting (EPSRC CHEDDAR 2027-29) - legal interception in age of AI-on-RAN
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Ph.D. Students (11):
Dimitris Panagopoulos (EPSRC iCASE with Thales, 2023-27) - human machine teaming for search & rescue
Yifan Yang (2023-26) - civil aviation safety for air mobility on demand
Lakhepatil Ajinkya (EPSRC TAS-S, 2023-27) - causal learning for trustworthy autonomy
Sorin Negru (2023-26) - Hybrid PNT navigation
Jamal Mazar (2023-26) - space wireless networks
Cillian Wang (2023-26) - compressive sensing and control in aircraft wings
Minqing Qiu (2024-27) - narrative based mapping in remote areas
Paris Chatzithanos (Leonardo CDAS, 2023-27) - trustworthy learning for autonomous navigation
Ugurcan Celik (EPSRC iCASE with BAE Systems, 2024-27) - physics-informed AI
Nathan Hull (EPSRC iCASE with BAE Systems, 2025-28) - combinatorial AI for defence
Advert (EPSRC FTH, 2027-30) - Distributed Machine Learning over Mobile Networks
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Ph.D. Students External (1):
Tabitha Watson (2021-, Exeter University) - Climate induced migration modelling
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MRes (1):
Devraj Singha (2026-27) - assurance of hybrid autonomy architectures
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Previous PhD/Postdocs:
Academia - K. Fung Chu (Lecturer @ Bristol Uni), M. Arana-Catania (Snr. Software Engineer @ Oxford Uni), Z. Wei (Ass. Professor @ Durham Uni), G. Aquino (Lecturer @ Goldsmiths Uni. of London), H. Yuan (Lecturer @ Kingston Uni.), S. Qiu (Ass. Prof. @ Southwest Jiaotong Uni), N. Gupta (Ass. Professor @ Warwick Uni.), A. Al-Shami (Ass. Prof. @ S. Arkansas Uni.), I. Atthanayake (Lecturer @ Open Uni. Sri Lanka), C. Pilgrim (Research Fellow @ UCL), M. Mazzamurro (Research Fellow @Aarhus Uni.), J. Liu, L. Wang (Ass. Prof. @ Northwestern Uni.), A. Sonea [FinGeo PhD Prize 2025] (Research Fellow @ Vrije Uni. Brussels)
Industry - N. Tkachenko (Data Scientist @ Lloyds Banking Group and Cambridge Uni.), G. Mosquera (Chief Data Scientist @ Alpha Analytics), S. Esfahani (Engineer @ Occuity), S. Chotvijit (Consultant @ NTT), M. Abbaszadeh (Snr. CFD Engineer @ WSP), G. Moutsinas (Researcher @ AlphaGrep), W. Qi (Wireless Engineer @Ranplan), S. Sun (Senior Data Scientist @ Micron Tech), C. Li (AI Engineer @ ByteDance), P. Geragersian (Project Manager @ Atkins), J. Ricketts (BAE Systems), A. Jin (Quantitative Analyst @ Maybank), Y. Tang (AI-RAN Engineer @ Huawei Singapore).
