Synopsis: Safety-critical systems such as autonomous driving need to operate safely in their real-world deployment. With the implementation of AI in these systems, new safety assurance paradigms are critical to mitigate the risks posed by AI as traditional rules-based controls are replaced by data-driven ones. In the talk, I will present an overview of existing methods for AI safety. Subsequently, I will introduce my contributions to this field by elaborating on the design of interpretable AI algorithms, explainable AI methods, and rigorous testing methodology. I will conclude my talk with future research directions towards safe and trustworthy AI.
Biography: I am currently an assistant professor at Heriot-Watt University, focusing on verification & validation, and AI safety for safe and trustworthy robotics. Before this, I was a research associate at the University of Edinburgh from October 2022 to April 2024. I completed my PhD at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 2021 and worked as a senior Engineer at DJI in 2022. I was awarded the Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship and the DAAD AINet Fellowship.