SACRO -meet the team
Jim Smith is Professor in Interactive Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deputy Director of the Computer Science Research Centre at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK, where he teaches and researches various aspects of AI. You can find his personal web page, describing my research and professional activities in more detail here, and his google scholar profile here. His research has been funded by bodies such as MRC, EU, EPSRC, DSTL, Innovate UK, UK Office for National Statistics (ONS), JISC, and a range of national and international companies. Since 2005 he has been collaborating with ONS on the intersection of AI with Disclosure Control. In 2022 he was Co-I, and ML technical workpackage lead of the UKRI/DARE project GRAIMatter, and he currently leads a UKRI/DARE project creating tools for the Semi-Automated Checking of research outputs (SACRO).
Elizabeth has been working in the area in the field of microdata access since 2015 and works closely with a wide range of stakeholders and organisations to help enable data access for research. As part of the SACRO project Lizzie is leading a work package in industry engagement- ensuring that all parts of industry are able to feed and shape the project.
Amy has several years of experience in supporting trusted users to access Scottish data for research and innovation — she has worked in data acquisition, information governance, data linkage and research support roles for several partnerships using the Scottish National Safe Haven. At the moment Amy is the Information Governance Facilitator at DataLoch, a research data service in South-East Scotland and also part of the multi-agency team that delivers Safe Researcher Training in Scotland.
Katie is the public involvement and engagement lead for the SACRO project. Based in Edinburgh she has a background in Science Communication and Public Engagement having previously worked at Edinburgh Science and National Museums Scotland.
Layla oversees RDS’s partnerships, communications and public engagement work. Layla has 20 years experience of working these areas and related fields, mainly around health research. This includes in the charity, private and research sectors.
James is an assistant professor of statistics at Durham University. He has worked with TREs through the development of the SPARRA score in Scotland.
Chris’ research interests include improving access to and capability within trusted research environments, and closing the loop of translating machine learning research outputs into routine use.
Emily is interested in working across TREs to support them to adopt the tools and methods developed by this project. She previously led the GRAIMATTER Dare project (https://dareuk.org.uk/sprint-exemplar-project-graimatter/), investigating disclosure control of AI algorithms, and brings that experience to this endeavour.
Michael has been with eDRIS for three years but in PHS and its precursor organisations, since 2004. His role in eDRIS is business manager involving looking after line management, finances, recruitment, National Safe Haven oversight and also general business processes such as SDC and data sign outs. Michael graduated in 1995 with a BSc in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Essex and completed his MSc in Computing Studies in 1999.
Simon is a senior technical consultant at National Services Scotland (a specialist health board within NHS Scotland) where he specialises in the use of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. He has a PhD in machine learning (University of Bristol) and prior to joining the NHS spent 10 years as a machine learning academic within the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow.
Katherine O’Sullivan is Operational Lead of the Grampian Data Safe Haven, a Trusted Research Environment collaboration between NHS Grampian and the University of Aberdeen. She is responsible for the operation and project management of DaSH. She is also a Co-Investigator on the DARE UK project SARA and a Co-Investigator on the Research Data Scotland Systems Development Fund supporting federated learning and knowledge exchange across the Scottish Safe Haven Network.
Maha finished their BSc in electrical and electronics engineering and specialised in software engineering. Maha worked as a software test engineer for 2 years and completed their masters in data science at UWE in 2022.
Felix has been working with confidential data, as both researcher and designer of data access procedures, for over thirty years. He is responsible for many of the key developments in research data governance, including the Five Safes, active researcher management, the principles-based approach to data governance, and output-based statistical disclosure control.
Richard works on the technical development of the main SACRO engine and the integration of support for machine learning outputs. He has previously worked on a wide range of AI projects, including the design of physical systems such as wind turbines and microbial fuel cells, the design of novel hypergraph partitioning algorithms, and the development of a platform for the artificial evolution and assessment of nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems. Most recently he has worked on the GRAIMATTER Dare project investigating privacy attacks and defences of trained machine learning models.
Ben Butler-Cole is the Director of Engineering at the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science. He runs the Bennett Institute’s engineering team. The Bennett Institute built OpenSAFELY, a secure, transparent, open-source platform for TRE deployment and runs the TREs OpenSAFELY-TPP and OpenSAFELY-EMIS.
