Professor Nicholas Caldwell

Nicholas is actively involved in research and knowledge exchange, collaborating with academics in the UK and globally, and working in partnerships with companies ranging from large international corporations to regional small-to-medium-sized enterprises. His research interests are principally in computer science (notably artificial intelligence, cyber security and software engineering), but he also has expertise in engineering design and scanning electron microscopy. He has been a PhD supervisor for the University of Cambridge in engineering design and is currently a PhD supervisor for the University of Suffolk with current students involved in research on artificial intelligence, computer games, cyber security, extended realities, human-computer interaction, software engineering and sustainable computing. He is always happy to consider applications for postgraduate research (PhD) in any of these areas.

As Director of the Digital Futures Institute, Nicholas is responsible for leading and supporting research and knowledge exchange in all areas of computing, with an eye to future REF and KEF submissions. He is currently leading an InnovateUK funded partnership with Diometer Ltd, an up-and-coming regional agritech firm, supporting the development of their Flexifarm software platform. One workstream of this project involves leveraging Large Language Models to translate natural language questions into NoSQL queries, summarise the results of these NoSQL queries and generate audit and compliance documentation automatically – the goal of this is to support Diometer and farmers in reducing the time and costs of completing such documentation.

A long-standing collaboration is with the charity Suffolk Together and their spinout company Discover More (Suffolk) Ltd, who were previously Suffolk Libraries Industrial and Provident Society and responsible for library provision across the county of Suffolk. This collaboration centered initially on how libraries could support mental health and wellbeing interventions. Through the auspices of KEEP+ funding,  an evidence base was created to show the beneficial role played by libraries in addressing wellbeing needs, and the project also a prototype AI recommendation engine to match activities to wellbeing needs. This has since evolved into the Discover More online service (run by the spinout company). Current work is focused on creating data curation agents to provide the hyperlocalised activities that the service recommends, and supporting the company and the charity in positioning the Discover More service for commercial applications such as social prescribing in the NHS, student support in the university sector and workplace wellbeing.

Nicholas is heavily involved in business engagement and enterprise activities, providing consultancy for regional SMEs, and was “knowledge base supervisor” for a Knowledge Transfer Partnership in conjunction with Coderus on automated software quality assurance, and one with Matrixx on automated software testing. He is now Academic Lead for a new Knowledge Transfer Partnership with J Mc Cann & Co Ltd. He is happy to discuss opportunities such as KTPs and other Innovate UK programmes with businesses.

He was Suffolk's Principal Investigator for the InnovateUK-funded "100CC" project (consortium led by Cisco). This work assisted the SME partners in improving their software and hardware solutions aimed at combating the social isolation and lack of digital skills of elderly and vulnerable people. Consequently, both Bronze Software Labs and GDS Digital were able to deploy their products to support a number of local government authorities in assisting vulnerable citizens in accessing essential services during the current pandemic.

He was Suffolk’s Principal Investigator on the Smarter Suffolk: A Live Lab consortium project, which was part of a national initiative of the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport’s (ADEPT) SMART Places Live Lab, funded by the Department of Transport. The aim was to undertake a variety of scientifically rigorous trials utilising Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and through analysis of the resulting rich and large datasets of environmental, traffic and other conditions, determine the validity of the business cases and inform strategic adoption across the UK.

From 1998 to 2013, Nicholas was a Research Associate at the Department of Engineering within the University of Cambridge, undertaking research in multiple areas with a diverse set of research groups.

His initial research was a continuation of his work in applied artificial intelligence and microscopy, jointly with Dr David Holburn and Bernie Breton, with funding from LEO Electron Microscopy (now Carl Zeiss Microscopy) and the Isaac Newton Trust. From 1998 to 2000, he also worked with the Engineering Design Centre to develop web-based tools, such as WebCADET, a decision support and knowledge management system) to support design research. In this, he was assisting Professor Paul Rodgers (formerly of the Engineering Design Centre, now Professor of Design at Lancaster University) and Dr Avon Huxor (then at the University of Middlesex).

From January 2006 to June 2013, Nicholas was an active member of the Engineering Design Centre at the University of Cambridge. He worked on the EPSRC Grand Challenge Knowledge & Information Management Through-Life (KIM) project, with a key result being the development of a set of principles for through-life management of engineering information, and the software implementation of Design Structure Matrices for the Cambridge Advanced Modeller platform. He was heavily involved in the design and development of the first Inclusive Design Toolkit website. In change management research, Nicholas was part of the NECTISE consortium with BAE Systems, designing and implementing the Change Prediction Method algorithms and visualisations in the Cambridge Advanced Modeller platform. In a joint project with BP and MIT, he conducted research to benchmark existing BP change management policies, providing a set of recommendations for adoption across multiple business units, and analysed historical change data to identify effective indicators for predicting project success and failure. In the EU Framework Programme 7 project, CRESCENDO, led by Airbus, his work focused on applying change prediction techniques to workflows and modelling those design processes within the context of a simulation factory of federated tools and models for next-generation aircraft design. His final piece of research at Cambridge was to develop a set of healthcare readiness levels for assessing the maturity of innovations in healthcare.

Nicholas holds a BA in Computer Science and a PhD in Engineering, both from the University of Cambridge. His doctoral thesis was entitled "Knowledge-Based Engineering for the Scanning Electron Microscope".

His publications can be found via ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0597-0113