Giulia De Togni announced as new Chancellor’s Fellow

The University of Edinburgh has announced its 2024 intake for its prestigious Chancellor’s Fellowship scheme. We are delighted to announce that Giulia De Togni, Centre of Biomedicine, Self and Society at the Usher Institute, is among the successful candidates. 

About Chancellor’s Fellowships 

The University has awarded Chancellor’s Fellowships since 2014. They are designed to help the most promising academics advance from the early stages of their career to more senior roles, and to empower their ground-breaking research. They are for academics with a vision for future leadership in research and innovation, which may straddle leading a major area of research, forging new industry partnerships, or research-led teaching innovations. 

Giulia’s research focus 

For her Chancellor’s Fellowship, Giulia will continue her work on Responsible AI and Robotics Innovation in Healthcare, which aims to enable different stakeholders to become part of the co-production of healthcare technologies to inform and shape innovation together. In relation to this, she said: 

There is a real and pressing obstacle for achieving responsible innovation in this area, namely the lack of inclusivity of different stakeholder voices and the lack of identification of end-user needs and the incorporation of these into AI/robotic design and deployment. For the Chancellor’s Fellowship, I propose a novel programme of research that addresses this obstacle and considers how innovation practices can best be organised to meet social needs, including the need for equity and social justice, and how these technologies may be used better to effectively assist a range of healthcare workers and care recipients. 

Giulia De Togni

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Giulia’s background and collaborations 

Giulia has served as a member of the Usher Institute Research Committee since 2020, representing early career researchers. She is strongly committed to fostering a supportive research and work environment where all staff members can feel safe, thrive, and celebrate their accomplishments.

Currently, Giulia is also a Wellcome Trust Fellow and a Fellow of The Alan Turing Institute; a Visiting Researcher at the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics/Bayes Centre; and a Postdoctoral Affiliate of the Edinburgh Futures Institute. Giulia collaborates with teams of roboticists at the School of Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, National Robotarium, and Bristol Robotics Laboratory.

Internationally, in Japan, Giulia collaborates with researchers at the Science and Technology Agency (JST) and AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology). In France, she is a member of the INNOVCARE group (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales). In South Korea, Giulia collaborates with researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. And, in Italy, she is a postdoctoral affiliate of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT).

Further information 

Read the University's announcement, Early career researchers appointed as Chancellor’s Fellows

Read more on Chancellor’s Fellowships at The University of Edinburgh

View Giulia’s profile