Dr. Laura Gilbert is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the School of Public Policy, specialising in technical data science, and in the effective communication of evidence. She is also a civil servant, working as the Director of Data Science in 10 Downing Street and as joint Chief Analysts in the Cabinet Office, with responsibility for the AI for the Public Good program. Her focus is on providing fast-paced modelling and analysis to support policy making and delivery, and rapid prototyping to speed up government innovation. She also runs a broader radical upskilling and transformation agenda promoting the better use of evidence, data and technology in government decision making.
Laura holds a doctorate in Particle Physics and GRID computing from the university of Oxford, and undergraduate degrees in natural sciences from Cambridge. She held lectureships and a post-doctoral research position at Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and of the Institute of Analytics. She was awarded a CBE for Services to Technology and Analysis in the New Year’s Honours 2024.
Laura spent three years as a quantitative analyst in the financial sector, working in modelling, analysis and artificial intelligence before joining a new medical technologies company as a director. She spent the next decade working as a hands-on CTO bringing the company from start up to SME to acquisition, and has significant experience in software development, wearable technology, systems architecture, data integration and system/data security. She is fluent in seven programming languages, and is named on four patents, including lead inventor on two data security patents.
As part of her medical technologies work she performed scientific consultancy completing diverse projects including creating an algorithm to detect heard beats via electromagnetic signals passing through clothing for medical evacuation; another algorithm to detect heart rhythm anomalies in close to real time through a patient's thumbs; providing analytic tools to biologists trying to disrupt the cell cycle of the malaria parasite; providing predictive algorithms based around measuring biomechanics and mental health measures to predict when a soldier in training was likely to become seriously injured in the near future, and predicting the behaviour of groups of snipers. She recently built the data collection and API for a pro-bono clinical trial in doxycycline based treatment for COVID.