Professor Vic Grout, is a professional futurist/futurologist researching emerging and future technologies (artificial intelligence, big data analytics, Internet of Things, robotics, automation and high-speed communications) and their wider social (ethical, legal, political, environmental and economic) impact. With degrees in mathematics and computing and a PhD in engineering, he has held a number of professorial chairs, including ‘Network Algorithms’ and ‘Computing Futures’, in an academic career running from the 1980s to the 2020s. Although officially retired now, he remains very research active and retains various international expert academic appointments.

Professor Grout has authored over 500 research papers and four books on these various topics along with a science fiction novel, ‘Conscious’. He edits the ‘Turing’s Radiator’ blog on technological philosophy and appears regularly on radio and TV. Past and current projects range from using Internet hardware and software to enable the elderly and disabled to lead longer independent lives, through projects such as AI for online age-gating, automatic medical diagnosis and using machine learning for efficient minefield clearance, to advising the European Commission on ethical concerns relating to funded research projects.

Vic’s talk, entitled 'Future Technologies: Key Drivers and Beyond', will discuss the main drivers of technological change for the next few years both individually and working together. It will also consider their wider social, ethical, economic, political, environmental and ethical impact. Where’s all this heading? For good, for bad, for whom?

Jonathan C. Roberts is a professor in the School of Computer Science, Bangor University, UK., He was a lecturer (Kent 1999), Senior Lecturer (Kent 2004, Bangor 2007) and became a professor in 2015. His research is focused on data visualization, visual analytics, human computer interaction and computing pedagogy. He is interested in how to analyse, visualise and interact with data, and how to sketch designs and make appropriate designs. He is the creator of the Five Design-Sheet methodology, and author of the book Five Design-Sheets: Creative Design and Sketching for Computing and Visualisation, Springer Nature, June 2017. He focuses on heritage and archaeology, oceanography, pedagogy, and social networking domains, Prof Roberts’ hypothesis is that by displaying the data in several different ways, and allowing the user to highly interact with it, then the user gains a better understanding of their data.