Prof. Oliver Lemon

Oliver Lemon is a Professor of AI and an Academic Co-Lead at the UK's National Robotarium. His research focuses on generative AI, machine learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP),  AI safety, and interactive robotics. He is also the Director of the Interaction Lab within the Department of Computer Science at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.

Professor Lemon has held research positions at Stanford and Edinburgh Universities. He has led international and national research projects in conversational AI, multimodal interaction, NLP, and robotics. He has collaborated with companies such as Amazon, BMW, and PAL robotics, and with the NHS and UNICEF.

Key Achievements and Recognition

• ELLIS Fellow: He was elected as an ELLIS Fellow in Multimodal Learning Systems in 2024.
• Entrepreneurship: Professor Lemon was a founder and the former Chief AI Officer of the conversational AI spin-out company, Alana AI.
• Faculty Advisor: He was a faculty advisor for the Amazon Alexa Challenge, with his teams reaching the finals in 2017, 2018, and 2023.
• Academic Leadership: He serves as an Action Editor for TACL: Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics (published by MIT Press) and as an ARR area chair.
• External review: he performs scientific and institutional reviews for organisations such as the UK AI Security Institute (AISI), European Research Council (ERC), European Commission (EC), and INRIA.
• Media: his research has been widely reported, for example in Time Magazine, WIRED, and the Times and he has appeared on national television and radio (for example BBC "Tomorrow's World" and "The Joy of AI").