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I'm Dr Emma Byrne. I'm a research scientist and freelance writer.
and my specialist areas of interest are artificial intelligence and neuroscience.
I got my PhD in artificial intelligence from University College London about ten years ago.
And since then I've mainly been working on robotics projects.
Two of the most interesting ones were the robot scientist project
at the University of Aberystwyth where we built a physical robot that was capable of figuring out and then performing
lots of interesting experiments to try to and learn new things about the genome of yeast to work out
how brewer's yeast works inside.
I also worked with the university of Middlesex to put together a robot that was capable of
playing computer games with a human assistant.
And in doing that - in having those conversations and
running around computerised mazes it learned to not only see like a human being
but also speak like a human being as well.
So that taught us something both about computers and also about the workings of the human brain
I've always found that intersection really interesting,
ever since reading the Issac Asimov books as a child.
I'm also extremely passionate about public engagement;
I have a media fellowship from the British Science Association
and have written for the Financial Times, Global Business Magazine and Forbes on science and technology.
I also regularly give talks in the pub about science, the most recent one was about
Alan Turing's contribution to artificial intelligence and Computer Science.