Meet our team
The Prosperity Partnership brings together University partners with internationally leading expertise in the foundational areas of audio-visual AI and software defined networks together with the BBC’s world-leading creative production expertise.
AI4ME team leaders
Professor Adrian Hilton
Academic Principal Investigator, EB/MB Chair, S5 Business Impact Academic Lead
Biography
Director of Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP), Director of Surrey Institute for People-Centred AI (PAI), University of Surrey.
Dr Graham Thomas
EB/MB Co-chair, Business Challenge Lead
Biography
I joined CVSSP as Professor of Creative Technology in April 2025, after more than 40 years at BBC R&D, with my last role there being Head of Applied Research, Production. My work included leading research using computer vision & graphics for programme production and overseeing work on immersive audio, as well as running R&D’s Graduate Scheme.
I did my PhD on video motion estimation while working at the BBC back in 1990, which led to a commercially successful standards converter which won an Emmy award and a Queen’s Award and is still in use today for conversion between 50Hz and 60Hz TV standards. I went on to work on various video coding standards, then developed some of the first technology for virtual production. This included a new keying method and a camera tracking system used both for TV production and in films including Harry Potter, with the tracking system winning an RTS Technical Innovation Award. I have been collaborating with Adrian Hilton and the CVSSP team on various projects since 1999, with results contributing directly to a sports graphics system that was commercialised and has been in regular use by the BBC and many other broadcasters since 2004. The system won an IBC Production Innovation award in 2006 and a Queen’s Award for Innovation in April 2011.
I enjoy collaborating across industry and academia and have been involved in numerous EU and InnovateUK projects, including MAX-R (Horizon Europe, investigating capturing live music performances for experiencing in a game engine) and Polymersive (InnovateUK, looking at capturing audio and video for immersive media). I also helped set up the BBC Audio Research Partnership in 2011, which was the first large-scale multi-university partnership that BBC R&D was involved in.
I worked with Adrian and our partners at the University of Lancaster to set up the 5-year AI4ME Prosperity Partnership on personalised media at scale, which started in September 2021.
Professor Nicholas Race
Co-investigator, CI Lead Lancaster, S4 Intelligent Network Compute Academic Lead
Biography
Professor of Networked Systems, School of Computing and Communications at the Lancaster University.
Alexandra Grama
Research Programme Manager
Biography
Research Programme Manager, Surrey Institute for People-Centred AI (PAI), University of Surrey
Audio-visual AI — University of Surrey (CVSSP)
Surrey’s CVSSP expertise in audio-visual AI for machine understanding of captured content will allow efficient creation of personalised OBM experience for real-time understanding of general real-world dynamic scenes.
Dr Armin Mustafa
Audio-Visual AI - Academic Lead, S2 Audio-Visual AI Academic Lead
Dr Jean-Yves Guillemaut
S1 User Experience Academic Lead
Professor Philip Jackson
S3 Production Tools Academic Lead
Elizabeth James
Audio-Visual AI
Dr Marco Volino
Audio-Visual AI
Professor Wenwu Wang
Audio-Visual AI
Dr Andrew Rogoyski
S5 Business Impact
Personalised experience — BBC
Personalised Experiences at Scale: intelligent user-centred media personalisation for enhanced QoE.
Robert Dawes
S2 Audio-Visual AI Business Lead
Dr Michael Evans
Personalised experience
Dr Maxine Glancy
Personalised experience
Dr Rajiv Ramdhany
S4 Intelligent Network Compute Business Lead
Margaret Karnaze
S5 Business Impact Lead
Intelligent network compute — Lancaster
Lancaster University’s expertise in software-defined networking will develop adaptive systems for delivery of personalised experience to millions of people whilst maintaining cost and energy efficiency.
Professor Nicholas Race
Co-investigator, CI Lead Lancaster, S4 Intelligent Network Compute Academic Lead
Dr Yehia Elkhatib
Intelligent Network Compute
Dr Barry Porter
Intelligent Network Compute
AI4ME alumni
We are grateful for the invaluable contributions of all the experts who have previously worked on AI4ME projects, our AI4ME ‘alumni’.
Dr Chris Baume
S3 Production Tools Business Lead
Samantha Chadwick
BBC Business Manager
Dr Adrian Woolard
S5 Business Impact Business Lead
Dr Jon Francombe
Personalised experience