DERI Annual Research Day

We were delighted to host our annual DERI Research Day in 2026, bringing together colleagues, researchers, industry partners, and students to explore how AI is shaping research, healthcare, science, engineering, creativity, and society.

The event was opened by by Prof Colin Bailey, President and Principal of Queen Mary University of London, who highlighted the vital role that QM's research institutes play in driving innovation and collaboration. 

Colin commented that  " Our reseach institutes are our beacons of research activity and they serve as interdisciplinary hubs, designed to tackle global challenges by combining expertise across science, technology, humanities and the arts. This is something that only a multidisciplinary, world-leading university such as Queen Mary can achieve.  By attracting significant external funding and building strong industrial partnerships, our institutes help translate academic research into practical applications; and we can provide a framework to attract and retain top-tier researchers and nurture future academic leaders."

A huge thank you to our keynote speaker Lord Chris Holmes MBE for his inspiring talk, AI – A Fundamentally Human Endeavour, and to Dr Mozhgan Kabiri Chimeh from NVIDIA for sharing insights on Advancing Research and Science with AI. We are also grateful to Dell Technologies and NVIDIA for their support and contributions throughout the day,

We also heard thought-provoking faculty presentations from our DERI Fellows Claude Chelala, Sean Gong FREng, Guan H. Tang

One of the highlights of the day was showcasing the outstanding work of our early career researchers. Their lightning talks covered topics ranging from precision cancer care and multimodal AI to AI governance, healthcare innovation, and medical image synthesis. Congratulations to  Laura Bevis, Daqian Shi, Jaimie Lee Freeman, Shibo Li, Elona Shatri.

The afternoon breakout sessions chaired by DERI staff and Associates, sparked lively discussion and new connections acorss three key themes:
🔹 AI for Healthcare with Venet Osmani, Caroline Roney, Michael R. Barnes
🔹 AI in Science & Engineering with Cedric John, Mona Jaber
🔹 Responsible, Creative & Societal AI with Gina Neff, Prof David Leslie

We concluded the day with a panel discussion on Deploying AI at Scale, chaired by Prof Greg Slabaugh, exploring both the opportunities and challenges of translating AI research into real-world impact.

Poster Prize Winners

A special congratulations to our three poster prize winners, selected from more than 30 outstanding entries:

🏆 AI for Human Health and Life Sciences
Zara Arain – Scalable characteristics of pregnancy loss and reconstruction of pregnancy episodes using maternal and neonatal electronic data

🏆 AI for Responsible, Creative, and Societal AI
Duncan Reynolds - Paradoxes of Negotiating Explainability in the Development of Sociotechnical Intelligence: An Ethnographic Study of the Creation of AI for Healthcare

🏆  AI for Natural and Engineered Systems 
Chia-Yen Chiang – An Explainable Multimodal Framework for Cyclist Safety Perception in Mixed Traffic Environments

Congratulations to Zara, Duncan, and Chia-Yen on this well-deserved recognition. The quality of submissions reflected the talent, creativity, and interdisciplinary excellence that continues to define the DERI community.

Thank you to everyone who joined us, contributed their ideas, and helped make DERI Research Day 2026 such a memorable and inspiring event. We look forward to building on these conversations and collaborations in the year ahead. 🚀✨