Doctoral candidate Victoria Sherratt has been named the winner of the Alan Turing Institute’s Community Award.
Victoria is examining methods to add cultural context to AI anaylsis of online content and identify problematic social media memes – to make the internet a safer place.
The award has been made by the Alan Turing Institute’s Enrichment Programme to recognise Victoria’s work. The prestigious opportunity will allow Victoria to broaden her research, with chances to work with people from across disciplines at the Institute. She will also receive a £1,000 grant to pay for training.
She said: “I am really excited about the opportunity; it will enable me to advance my work and to collaborate with people at the top. We often work in silos and this will help me network and make links with people I wouldn’t otherwise get a chance to meet.”
She added: “As a society, we don’t understand social media enough and my work aims to improve our understanding. Memes can be sources of propaganda and misinformation, but there are so many of them it is important to find a more effective way to read them, which is why I am looking at AI approaches. I look forward to furthering my research having been given this award.”
Victoria is a student in Computer Science. Her PhD is supervised by Dr Nina Dethlefs, a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science. Dr Dethlefs said: “Memes look fun and harmless, but that might not always be the case. Victoria’s work is important and it is excellent that this has been recognised by the Turing Institute. The award will enable Victoria to further this work and we look forward to seeing the results.”
Last year, the University of Hull joined the prestigious Turing University Network. The Institute unites world-class research, to apply it to national and global challenges, and inform debate.
The network is named in honour of Alan Turing, whose pioneering work in theoretical and applied mathematics, engineering, and computing is considered to have laid the foundations for modern-day data science and Artificial Intelligence.