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Image of Elena Simperl

Elena Simperl

Director of Research, ODI

Elena Simperl is one of the UK’s leading advocates for AI that is transparent, trustworthy, and truly human-centred. 

As the ODI’s Director of Research and co-Director of King’s College London’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI), she is in the AMiner top 2000 most influential scholars in AI in the world, and is the UK’s expert on building AI that works ‘for’ people, rather than just ‘on’ them. She is on Stanford University's list of "World's Top 2%" scientists.

Elena is the UK’s technical compass for trustworthy AI, building AI systems that are technically robust and grounded in openness and collaboration. Her work tackles a fundamental issue: most AI systems are opaque ‘black boxes’, making decisions and generating content based on data the public can’t see, understand, or challenge. 

As a technical leader, building data foundations such as knowledge graphs, metadata systems, and open data flows, Elena can explain how these systems work in simple terms and why AI systems must be explainable, accountable, and participatory.


Together, Elena and the ODI are working to build a world where data works for everyone. Quality and volume of high-quality data are vital for training accurate AI systems, unlocking business innovation, and delivering benefits to society. Open data - freely available for anyone to access, use, and share - is central to this vision. Put simply, without data, there is no AI. And without accountability and participation, there’s no trust.


Elena currently leads the ODI’s programme of data-centric AI research, which studies and designs the data infrastructure of AI models and applications. In 2025, she co-authored a Wellcome Collection paper, outlining a blueprint for an AI-ready UK National Data Library (NDL) and ran the NDL Symposium at King’s College London. To date, Elena has written more than 300 academic papers.


In her 18-year career, Elena has led dozens of UKRI, EU, and industry-funded projects across trustworthy AI, data governance, and civic tech, advised multiple governments and global organisations, and chaired conferences in AI, social computing, and data innovation. Elena is also a Fellow of the British Computer Society, the Royal Society of Arts, and the Association for Computing Machinery.

Content by Elena Simperl