Dr Wei Pang – Scottish Crucible 2015

Senior Lecturer in Computing Science

Office: 229 Meston Building | University of Aberdeen | Old Aberdeen | Aberdeen | AB24 3UE

Email: pang.wei@abdn.ac.uk | Telephone: +44 (0) 1224 273067

 The Scottish Crucible experience really inspired me to be more active on inter/multidisciplinary research. Many of my funded projects since SC are multidisciplinary in nature. I list the following major achievements since 2015:

1. I secured two major EPSRC projects as co-investigator: 

(1) “New Industrial Systems: Manufacturing Immortality” (EP/R020957/1, £2.69M). This is a large joint project involving seven universities (Aberdeen, Bristol, Manchester, Lancaster, Cranfield, Northumbria, and Sheffield Hallam) and several partners, including the Data Lab, CENSIS, Dstl, and several companies. As Co-PI at Aberdeen site (Aberdeen value: ~£360K), my role is to use machine learning to facilitate the design and manufacturing of self-healing materials. 

(2) “Realising Accountable Intelligent Systems (RAInS)”. This is a £1.1M joint project in collaboration with Oxford and Cambridge (Aberdeen: EP/R033846/1, Cambridge: EP/R033501/1, Oxford: EP/R03379X/1). My role in this project is to facilitate the implementation of accountability of AI systems through capturing and analysing their behaviour.

• I was promoted to a full member of EPSRC Peer Review College in 2018.
• I am PI on the Royal Society international exchange project: ‘Physarum Intelligence: Understanding and Learning from Competing Slime Mold’ (Grant Ref IE160806, £12K). This is an interdisciplinary project involving collaborations with a biologist (another cruciblist).
• I secured several externally funded PhD studentships from BBSRC (eastbio DTP, BB/M010996/1, ~£95.2K), EPSRC DTP (EP/N509814/1), and the Data Lab (joint with a company, ~£60K).
• I am currently developing two proposals on using AI for cancer early detection with researchers from Oxford, National Physics Laboratory, Leeds, UCL, Institute for Cancer Research, and Middlesex. These two proposals have been notionally funded by Cancer Research UK, EPSRC, and STFC during a sandpit event (the final funding confirmation is subject to the submission of the satisfactory full proposals).
• I was co-chair for the 31^st International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning in 2018 (a major event in the field), and I was appointed as program committee member for the 28^th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2019, a top AI conference).