Professor Dhaval Thakker

Professor Dhavalkumar (Dhaval) Thakker is a British Indian Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things, research lead for Computer Science, and Head of the interdisciplinary Centre for Responsible Artificial Intelligence (https://www.hull.ac.uk/research/centres/centre-for-responsible-ai) at the University of Hull, United Kingdom. He also serves as Turing Academic Lead for the University and Engagement Director (North & Midlands) for the EPSRC National Edge AI (https://edgeaihub.co.uk/).

Professor Thakker’s research advances Responsible AI, encompassing AI safety, explainability, and fairness, including in distributed and edge environments. His work bridges Responsible and Explainable AI with Edge Intelligence, IoT, and Human-Centred Systems, addressing high-impact domains such as healthcare, social care, circular economy, manufacturing, law, and critical infrastructure.

He has secured and led over £2M in research funding as principal investigator and contributed to collaborative programmes exceeding £15M, funded by EPSRC, Innovate UK, the EU, OfS, and BMA. His current portfolio includes IRIS-AI, an Innovate UK partnership with Veracity Healthcare developing uncertainty-aware AI for safer incident management in domiciliary care; TRIDENT, a digital-twin platform for Industry 4.0 training; and leadership of Hull’s contribution to the EPSRC National Edge AI Hub, advancing safe and human-centred intelligence at the edge.

Prior to joining Hull, he was Associate Professor in IoT and Explainable AI at the University of Bradford, where he founded the IoT and Smart Cities Innovation Lab, launched the North of England’s first MSc prorgamme in Internet of Things, and served as the Director of Postgraduate Research for the Faculty of Engineering and Informatics.

His record in knowledge exchange and innovation includes over a dozen KTP and AKT projects with organisations such as Connexin, Veracity Healthcare, Techbuyer, Luxinar, and others, alongside international collaborations with the University of Southern California, University Of Maryland, Baltimore County, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KSA), IIT Madras, and IIT Delhi.

Professor Thakker has supervised over 15 doctoral researchers, examined more than 40 PhDs internationally, and managed multiple postdoctoral researchers through his funded projects. He serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Big Data (the top-ranked journal in Google Scholar’s Big Data category, IF: 6.4) and Frontiers in IoT, and sits on the Editorial Board of Springer’s Discover IoT Journal. He is also a Guest Editor for the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (IF: 6.8) and the Neurosymbolic AI Journal.His research has been recognised with multiple Best Paper Awards, including at the 10th IEEE Conference on IoT, Big Data and AI for a Smart and Safe Future (2019) and the 12th European Semantic Web Conference (2015).

He is a regular reviewer for UKRI, including EPSRC, NERC, and NIHR, particularly for AI, digital innovation, and data-centric research portfolios, and frequently contributes to major international AI and Semantic Web conferences as a reviewer and organiser.

Dhaval was educated in India and the United Kingdom, completing his BEng in Information Technology in India, followed by an MSc in Data Communications from Brunel University London and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Nottingham Trent University. After his doctorate, he spent three and a half years in industry with the Press Association, the UK’s national news agency, where he developed an AI-driven semantic search engine for millions of archived images. He subsequently held several postdoctoral research positions in Professor Tony Cohn’s internationally recognised Artificial Intelligence Group at the University of Leeds, focusing on applied AI and knowledge representation.

His mission is to enable responsible, transparent, and human-centred AI that drives trustworthy innovation and real-world impact across sectors.

Due to the limitation of Worktribe in listing projects, below is his funding portfolio:

Funded Projects- Current projects:

1. University of Hull (UoH) Principal Investigator (PI) on **EPSRC**-funded National Edge AI Hub (£10M) with Newcastle (lead), Durham, Warwick, UWS, Imperial College London, Hull, Lancaster, Swansea, St Andrews, Southampton, Cardiff and Queen’s University Belfast (UoH: £275k) (2024-2029)

2. PI (UoH) on **EPSRC-**funded project on ‘Assuring AI (Large Language Models) based Systems Using Neuro-Symbolic AI’ with QinetiQ (£140k) (2024-2028)

3. PI (UoH) on **Innovate UK-**funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Veracity Healthcare to develop IRIS (Incident Reporting and Investigation System), will develop an AI-based, responsible, and uncertainty-aware solution for smarter incident management in domiciliary care. Total funding: £218,651.93 (2025-2027) 

4. PI (UoH) on **Innovate UK-**funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Humberside Engineering Training Association (HETA) to a digital twin platform for Industry 4.0 training. Total funding: £218,651.93 (2025-2027) 

5. PI (UoH) on **British Medical Association (BMA)** funded grant on “TRAFIC: Enhancing Tailored Risk Assessment and Forecasting in Intermittent Claudication through Integration of Multimodal Data and Explainable AI, and the Feasibility of Clinical Integration of the Model.” (£65k)(2025-2026)

6. Co-Investigator (Co-I) (UoH) on **Office for Students (OfS)** funding for PG Conversion Course in Artificial Intelligence (AI) (£690k) (2023-2026)

Funded - Completed Projects:

1. PI (UoH) on **Innovate UK-**funded on ‘AI speaker for improving efficiency in Care record management in Domiciliary care settings' (2023-2025) (£181k) 

2. PI (UoH) on **Innovate UK-**funded on 'Adopting a Circular Economy Business Model for Resource Efficiency in ICT industry (ACE4ICT) using AI and Real-Time Sensing' (2023-2025) (£178k) 

3. Co-I (UoH) on **Innovate UK**-funded AKT: Predictive Manufacturing Optimization using Neural Networks (PROMINN) with Luxinar (£33k) (2024)

4. Co-I (UoH) on **Innovate UK**-funded AKT TRUST-LLM: Tailored Responsible Use of Safe and Trustworthy LLM for Planning Law Institutional Memory Management with Walton & Co (Solicitors) (£33k) (2024)

5. Co-I (UoH) on **STFC**-funded Blockchain-enabled Cloud Computing based integrated Carbon Calculator (Be4C) (£25k) (2022-2023)

6. Co-I (UoH) on **Innovate UK-**funded AKT- A dynamic machine learning systems for standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code for UK Immigration Law Industry with AYJ Solicitors (£30k) (2022-2023)

7. PI(UoB) on **Innovate UK-**funded project on 'Conversational AI with Neuro-symbolic AI for Improving Efficiency of UK Immigration Case Management' (£170k) (2021-2023)

8. University of Bradford (UoB) PI on a **European Union-funded** Interreg project on "Smart Cities and Open data REuse (SCORE)" (€2.8M), with 9 EU cities: Amsterdam (lead; coordinator), Aarhus, Aberdeen, Bergen, Bradford, Ghent, Gothenburg, Hamburg) and 3 Universities (Aarhus University, University of Bradford and Amsterdam Data Science). (UoB: £342k) (2018-2022)

9. Co-I (UoB) on **Innovate UK** Smart Manufacturing theme funded 'Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing for Baking Industry’ (£618k) (2022-2025)

10. Co-I(UoB) on **Innovate UK** funded project on ‘AI-based Service Management Suite’ (£194k) (2020-2022)

11. PI (UoB) **Digital Catapult**-funded project on 'Horizon Scanning for Urban Planning with Net Zero Targets' (£15k) (2020-2021)

12. PI (UoB) a number of **HEFCE /HEIF**-funded ****grants of over £100k over 3 years for capital investment to build an IoT Innovation Lab and grow IoT research. Coupled with leading the launch of a new MSc in Internet of Things (IoT) programme (first in the North of England)  (2016-2019)

13. PI (UoB) on an **Innovate UK**-funded ****(KTP) on “Visual computing and machine learning for detecting objects in Drone-based 3D images”. (£139k) (2017-2019)

14. PDRA (University of Leeds/UoL) leading work streams on an **FP7 EU project** - Immersive Reflective Experience-based Adaptive Learning (ImREAL) ; a pioneering pedagogy project.(2011-2014)

15. PDRA (UoL) leading work streams on an **FP7 EU project**—DICODE ((Mastering Data-Intensive Collaboration and Decision Making); one of the first Big data based funded EU project with the focus on Decision Support and Sensemaking (2011-2014)

16. PDRA (UoL) leading work streams on an **FP7 EU project** - New Technologies for Tunnelling and Underground Works (NeTTUN) ; project involving 21 Industrial, Research & Development laboratories and SME organisations across 9 countries in Europe (2013-2015)

PhD students: Current students

1. Jevon Westcarr (2022-2026) - Responsible Evaluation of Clean Air Zones (Principal Supervisor)

2. Haidr Alkaraawi (2022-2026) - Explainable AI for Reinforcement Learning (Second supervisor) (passed viva with correction; to be graduated in 2026)

3. David Molenux (2024-2028) - AI assurance for Large Language Models using Knowledge Graphs (Principal Supervisor)

4. Sola Adewumi (2023-2028) - Explainable AI for Storm prediction (Principal Supervisor) (Sola works for Met Éireann - The Irish Meteorological Service, and does a part-time PhD with us.)

5. Ankit Nathu (2025-2031) - AI safety in Multi-agentic Healthcare framework (Principal Supervisor) (Ankit works for Google and does a part-time PhD with us)

6. Kuniko Paxton (2022-2026) - AI Fairness in Healthcare (Second supervisor)

7. Maneeha Rani (2023-2027) - Medical LLM Systems (Second supervisor)

8. Hari Neupane  (2024-2029) - Responsible AI frameworks for low-resource countries (Second supervisor; Hari works for Microsoft and does his PhD with us)

9. Samia Abid (2023-2027) - LLM with Social Media Data for Humanitarian Decision Making (Second supervisor)

10. Mostafa Anoosha (2024-2026) - Hybrid Vertical Federated Learning for Edge Devices (second supervisor)

PhD students: Completed/graduated PhD

1. Dr. Rameez Kureshi (2023)—PhD in AI and Air Pollution (Principal Supervisor) - Rameez is a now. a Lecturer with the University of Hull and leads two AI programmes for Hull (BSc, and MSc).

2. Reena John (2023), MPhil in Indoor Air Pollution and Asthma (2023) (Principal Supervisor)

3. Dr Julius Mboli (2022) - PhD in AI and Circular Economy (Principal Supervisor) - Julius is now a Lecturer at the University of Hull

4. Dr Yusuf Tukur (2022) - PhD in Cyber security and Block chain (Principal Supervisor) - Yusuf is now a Senior Research Associate with University of East Anglia

5. Dr Arjmand Naveed (2022) -PhD In AI and Healthcare - Semantic Similarity and Analogy - Arjmand is now a Lecturer with Bradford College in the UK.

6. *Dr Jedsada Phengsuwan (2021) -* PhD In AI and Early Warning Systems (Second Supervisor); Jedsada is now a Research Team member at the [National Electronics and Computer Technology Center](https://www.nectec.or.th/en/))

7. Dr Ebtesam Taktek (2018) - PhD In XML Databases and Semantics (Principal Supervisor) - Ebyesam is now a Lecturer with Higher Institute of Science and Technology - Al Shomoukh (Libya)

8. Marwan Al-Tawil (2017) - PhD in Exploration of Knowledge graphs (Second supervisor) now working as an Associate Professor with teh University of Jordon

9. Dimoklis Despotakis *(2014) -* PhD in: AI and Viewpoint Diversity (Second supervisor)now working as a Principal Consultant and Head of Data at Hippo, UK

Research (RA/PDRA) staff line managed so far:

1. Mostafa Anoosha, Research assistant and Technician on the EPSRC Edge AI hub (Edge AI with Federated Learning) (ongoing)

2. Sara Dehghani, Research assistant and Technician on the EPSRC Edge AI hub (Edge AI ) (ongoing)

3. Bilal Khan, KTP Associate for the KTP with Techbuyer (AI and Circular Economy) (2023-2025)

4. Jon Carrick, KTP Associate for the KTP with Connexin (AI in Adult Social care) (2024-2025)

5. Faezeh Abedi, Research Assistant in Trustworthy and Responsible Large Language Models on AKT with Walton & Co (2025); Faezeh is now an AI Engineer with the University of Southampton

6. Smriti Kotiyal, KTP Associate for the KTP with AYJ Solicitors (Conversational AI for Immigration Law) (2020-2022); Smriti is now a full time masters student with the University of Washington

7. Julius Mboli, Research Assistant on project with Digital Catapult on Smart infrastructure (2020-2021); Julius is now a Lecturer at the University of Hull

8. Rameez Kureshi,Research Assistant on EU Project Smart Cities and Open Data Reuse (2019-2021); Rameez is now a Lecturer at the University of Hull

9. Reena John,Research Assistant on EU Project Smart Cities and Open Data Reuse (2019-2021);

10. Bhupesh Mishra, PDRA on EU Project Smart Cities and Open Data Reuse (2019-2021); Bhupesh is now a Lecturer at the University of Hull