Prof Jon Crowcroft appointed Visiting Professor of I-X & Department of Computing

Professor Jon Crowcroft FRS, FREng will be joining I-X and the Department of Computing as a Visiting Professor, effective from 1st October 2023.

In his new role at I-X, Prof Crowcroft will be joining several groundbreaking initiatives, catalysing research and entrepreneurship for early career researchers. He will be supporting researchers in creating roadmaps from blue-sky research into practical applications and implementations.  To foster further collaborations within the realm of artificial intelligence, Prof Crowcroft will be supporting research initiatives between I-X and The Alan Turing Institute. 

Touching on the significance of the appointment, Professor Crowcroft said: “I’m really excited to be linking up with I-X and the Department of Computing - people I’ve known and been able to collaborate with over the past couple of decades, but now we can dive deeper into some of the really interesting problems of sustainable and interpretable systems and AI at scale, and many other topics!” 

Mentoring the next generation

“I’m delighted that Jon is joining us. His deep understanding of AI, and brilliant creativity, will be a tremendous asset to I-X, and I know our researchers are hugely looking forward to working with him.” Prof Eric Yeatman Chair of the Board for I-X

Professor Crowcroft has been the Marconi Professor of Communications Systems at the University of Cambridge since October 2001. He has worked in the area of internet support for multimedia communications for over 40 years, working on novel protocols and applications of networked systems and mobile computing. 

Among his many accolades, Prof Crowcroft is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the ACM, a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Fellow of the IET, the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the IEEE. For the last five years, he had the role of “Researcher at Large” at the Alan Turing Institute and spent time as the chair of the ATI's Programme Committee. 

Professor Michael Huth, Head of the Department of Computing, said: “We are pleased that Professor Crowcroft will join our department and Imperial-X; he brings with him considerable expertise in computer systems, networks, and their use for data science and machine learning, and a desire to mentor the next generation of researchers, educations, and innovators at Imperial in these areas."

An entrepreneurial environment for collaboration

Professor Crowcroft’s new appointment comes at an exciting time for I-X after its official launch earlier in the year. Based at Imperial College London's White City Campus, I-X is a co-located space that utilises the College’s long-standing excellence in AI.  

Chair of the Board for I-X, Professor Eric Yeatman said: “I’m delighted that Jon is joining us. His deep understanding of AI, and brilliant creativity, will be a tremendous asset to I-X, and I know our researchers are hugely looking forward to working with him.” 

Through a suite of educational programmes and the start of its recent Business Partners membership scheme, I-X has created an entrepreneurial environment to tackle major societal challenges. Its research projects include developing new computational tools for improving image-based detection and diagnosis of disease and using AI to direct the design and implementation of new biological systems.