Professor Tom Rodden
Responsibilities
Professor Tom Rodden is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange at University of Nottingham.
Professor Rodden sits on the University Executive Board and has responsibility for the university’s research portfolio, implementing the Research Strategy, which aims to transform research quality, performance and culture.
Professor Rodden also chairs the university’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) Steering Group, leading its post-REF2021 review to lay the foundations in preparing for the next REF exercise, as well as chairing the Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee and Nottingham Technology Ventures, which manages the university’s portfolio of spinout companies.
Profile
A Professor of Computing, Tom joined the University of Nottingham in 2001 from Lancaster University.
He served as Deputy Chief Executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) from April 2016 to April 2018 and Deputy Executive Chair between April 2018 and January 2019, with responsibility for research strategy, acting as the UK Research and Innovation lead in both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and e-Infrastructure.
Professor Rodden served as Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) from January 2019 until September 2023, advising ministers and senior officials, ensuring government policies were supported by the best science and technology advice available, and supporting effective communication between government, academia and industry. This included providing scientific lead for a range of government digital strategies and providing support for the DCMS sectors during Covid-19. He provided scientific leadership for the Events Research Programme during the Covid pandemic which deployed a broad range of sensors to capture human behaviour and environmental data across 37 large scale pilot events attended by over 5M people allowing large scale events to open safely.
He is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, a fellow of the British Computer Society and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Teaching and Research Summary
Professor Rodden is an interdisciplinary researcher who has championed a human centred approach to computing by drawing upon a range of disciplines to understand and tackle the technical, human and societal challenges emerging from people’s interaction with digital technologies. He is a leading member of the Mixed Reality Lab, an interdisciplinary research facility and creative studio that is home to a team of more than 70 researchers and media artists with strong links to the creative and cultural industries. He founded and previously co-directed Horizon Digital Economy Research, an RCUK-funded institute that brings together academic, commercial, public and third sector partners to shape the digital economy of tomorrow. Horizon provides solutions to societal challenges such as keeping young people safe online and ethical use of personal data, while helping policymakers keep pace with and anticipate digital innovations.
As Director of the EPSRC Equator Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration, Professor Rodden and colleagues showcased some of the first applications of mobile technologies to support tourism and worked with leading art groups to produce innovative, award-winning media performances.
He has authored over 300 articles, ranging from distributed systems to novel interdisciplinary design methods. He has a h-index of 82 ( 23,954 citations) in Google Scholar. His work has helped shaped the interdisciplinary fields of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction with Smart Environments.