Hi! I’m Ben and I’m a Lecturer in Predictive Analytics, or “Computational Soothsaying”, at the University of Edinburgh, where I’m also the Director of the Domain-Driven Machine Learning Lab and the PhD Programme in FinTech, as well as Chair of the Advisory Board for the Centre for Data, Culture and Society. I’m a cosmologist by training and work primarily on artificial intelligence.

Before moving back to Scotland, I was a McWilliams Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Physics in the United States, where I was also part of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and the National Science Foundation’s AI Planning Institute for Data-Driven Discovery in Physics. Prior to my time in Pittsburgh and after working in the investment management sector, I completed my PhD in Astrophysics as a Principal’s Career Development Scholar at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. Other qualifications include an MSc in Artificial Intelligence and accreditations as a Professional Statistician by the American Statistical Association and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Research groups

• MSBE Group
• Centre for Statistics
• Cosmostatistics Initiative
• Domain-Driven Machine Learning Lab
• Edinburgh Centre for Financial Innovations
• Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research

Learned societies

• RAS: Royal Astronomical Society
• ASA: American Statistical Association
• IAU: International Astronomical Union
• IAA: International Astrostatistics Association