Dr George De Ath

I am currently a co-Investigator of Project Bluebird, a prosperity partnership programme between the University of Exeter, NATS and The Alan Turing Institute. I am jointly leading the agent development research theme, with a focus on the creation of AI agents to safely and efficiently perform the task of air traffic control. Following a successful presentation at the British Science Festival, our work was recently featured in the Financial Times.

Previously, I served as a permanent Research Fellow for the Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDSAI) at the University of Exeter. Between 2019 and 2021, I worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on two UKRI-funded projects, RIBA to Reality: Deep Digital Twin to enable Human-Centric Buildings for a Carbon Neutral Future and Rapid Calibration for Operational and Strategic Digital Twins. Prior to this, I obtained my MSci in Computer Science and Mathematics and my Ph.D. in Computer Science, both at the University of Exeter.

Research Interests

Recently, I have been focusing on the application of machine learning and optimisation to real-world control problems, including air traffic control and air traffic management as a whole. However, my main research interests include the optimisation (calibration) of expensive-to-evaluate problems (models) using Bayesian optimisation, as well as more general single- and multi-objective optimisation tasks, and solving regression/classification problems in machine learning. I have experience in evolutionary optimisation, probabilistic modelling, with a particular focus on Gaussian processes, uncertainty quantification, and general machine learning approaches, e.g., neural networks, random forests, gradient boosted machines, etc.

Prospective Students

I am eager to supervise MSc and Ph.D. students, particularly those with interests in (Bayesian) optimisation, machine learning and uncertainty quantification, using both traditional statistical methods (i.e., Gaussian processes) and deep learning-based methods. However, I am also open to supervising students with other interests.

Here is a list of current and future opportunities:

• TBA: Several more fully-funded studentships will be avaliable for Project Bluebird in the coming months.
• EPSRC fully-funded studentships (opens Autumn 2024)
• China Scholarship Council and University of Exeter PhD Scholarships (opens Autumn 2024)

Current Students

• (Ph.D.) Ben Carvell: Safety Critical Decision Making under Uncertainty – Machine Learning Approaches for Tactical Air Traffic Control
• (Ph.D.) James Edwards: Transforming Air Traffic Control: Sequence Prediction and Modelling with Large Language Models