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Professor Nick Hawes

Professor Nick Hawes

Academic Champion for Public Engagement with Research

  • Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
  • Tutorial Fellow at Pembroke College
  • Director of ORI

Nick Hawes' research is focused on applying techniques from artificial intelligence to allow robots to perform useful tasks in everyday environments, with a particular interest in long-term autonomy, mobile service robots, and logistics. He researches how robots can understand the world around them (e.g. where objects usually appear, how people move through buildings etc.), and how they can exploit this knowledge to perform tasks more efficiently and intelligently. 

Nick has been practicing Public Engagement with Research since attending an RAEng-sponsored Engaging Engineering training event at the Cheltenham Science festival in 2010. Since then he has regularly participated in science festivals and public events, and been featured in media including BBC's Horizon and on the One Show. He was selected to give the Lord Kelvin Award Lecture at the 2013 British Science Festival. This honour is given to an active researcher who has demonstrated outstanding communication skills to a general audience. 

Nick was appointed Academic Champion for Public Engagement with Research in March 2021 to provide academic leadership in support of the Division's commitment to embedding excellent public engagement with research as part of research culture and practice.

Nick sits on the University's Public and Community Engagement with Research Advisory Board.