Senior Lecturer
- About
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- Email Address
- milan.markovic@abdn.ac.uk
- Office Address
- School/Department
- School of Natural and Computing Sciences
Biography
I am a Senior Lecturer in Computing Science at the University of Aberdeen. My research is interdisciplinary and focuses on provenance-based infrastructures, built on semantic web technologies and knowledge graphs, that make complex socio-technical AI and data-driven systems transparent, accountable and trustworthy. Since completing my PhD at Aberdeen in 2016, I have collaborated with colleagues from transport, law, medical sciences and agri-food to explore topics such as IoT transparency, AI accountability, carbon accounting, and governance of health data in Trusted Research Environments.
My current research includes focus on research integrity, combining large language models with provenance knowledge graphs to support transparent assessment of clinical trial publications.
In 2026 I was appointed as a Deputy Director of SUSTAIN, the £10.6m UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in sustainable agri-food, and I lead its activity at Aberdeen. I have been an investigator on projects funded by EPSRC, ESRC, MRC and the Royal Academy of Engineering.
I also lead the Aberdeen Software Factory, a student software house - for more details please see here.
- Research
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Research Overview
My research investigates how knowledge graphs can be used to understand, explain and hold to account the systems we increasingly rely on. I investigate how provenance knowledge graphs can make modern socio-technical systems, such as AI-driven decision-making, data supply chains and IoT-enabled infrastructures, more transparent and accountable. They do this by capturing machine-readable records of how data, decisions and claims are produced, so these can be queried and audited. I also explore how AI, particularly large language models, can help generate and curate knowledge graphs, turning unstructured sources such as publications, reports and records into structured, trustworthy knowledge.
Keywords: Provenance, Knowledge Graphs, Semantic Web, Large Language Models, Accountable AI, Research Integrity, Carbon Accounting, Agri-food, Healthcare, Internet of Things (IoT)
Research Areas
Accepting PhDs
I am currently accepting PhDs in Computing Science.
Please get in touch if you would like to discuss your research ideas further.
Research Specialisms
- Computer Science
Our research specialisms are based on the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) which is HESA open data, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
Current Research
Current Research Projects
AI-Assisted Integrity Assessment of Randomised Trials (ESRC)
Apr 2025 – Mar 2027
Systematic reviews of clinical trials inform healthcare guidelines, but untrustworthy trials can bias these reviews. This project develops INSPECT-AI, an LLM-assisted tool that supports reviewers in assessing trial integrity following the INSPECT-SR guidance. It also develops RIPE-O, an ontology that records the provenance of each assessment so that human and AI judgements stay transparent.
Past Research
Past Research
- EATS: Enhancing Agri-Food Transparent Sustainability (EPSRC, 2022–2025). Trusted data infrastructures for net-zero agri-food supply chains.Project site
- SARA: Semi-Automated Risk Assessment in TREs (MRC/DARE UK, 2023). Provenance and privacy risk tools for health data release.Project site
- Automated Verification of Best Practices in Digital Public Infrastructures (RAEng, 2023–2024). LLM-based checking of best practices in digital public infrastructures.
- Data Provenance for High-Security Health Data (2021–2022). Project site
- RAInS: Realising Accountable Intelligent Systems (2020–2022). Project site
- IoFT Data Trusts Working Group (2020–2021). Project site
- TrustLens: user-centred transparency for the IoT (2016–2020)Project site
- PROoFD-IT: Provenance of Food Delivery through IoT (2019–2020). Project site
- Food Sentiment Observatory (ESRC, 2017–2018)
- Smart Routing, Social Journeys, Food Safety Assurance and Informed Rural Passenger (2011–2017). IoT, social media and open data for transport and food safety.
Transparent Emissions Calculations (TEC) Toolkit
Organisations are often required to report carbon emissions associated with their operation. However, calculating emissions is not a trivial task and reported estimates differ depending on the calculation approach. The aim of this open source initiative is to provide ontology models and software tools to formalise provenance of carbon footprint calculations in a machine-understandable knowledge graphs to enhance their transparency.
Supervision
My current supervision areas are: Computing Science.
Student projects:
Deep Compression and Sparse Methods for Efficient Deep Neural Architectures (Andy Li, Role:2nd Supervisor)
Transparent Carbon Footprint Quantification And Reporting in Agriculture (Alisa Holm, Role: 1st Supervisor)
Enhancing long-term evaluation and monitoring of responsible AI deployments in medical context (Arpita Gado Role: 1st Supervisor)
Funding and Grants
1/04/2025 – 30/09/2026
Title: Evaluating the Development and Impact of AI-Assisted Integrity Assessment of Randomised Trials in Evidence Syntheses
Funder: ESRC
Role: CI
Budget: ~£260k
2024
Title: Automated NLP pipelines for discovery of fabricated clinical studies
Funder: UoA Internal Pump Prime Funding
Role: PI
Budget £10k
2024
PHD Studentship -
Funder UoA Development Trust
Budget ~£100k
2024
Title PHD Studentship -
Funder: SUSTAIN CDT (via EPSRC)
Budget: ~£100k
01/09/2023 – 31/08/2024
Title: Automated Verification of Best Practices in Digital Public Infrastructures
Funder: RaENG
Role: CI (UK lead)
Budget: £20k (our share ~£6k)
01/02/2023 2023 – 31/10/2023
Title: SARA: Semi-Automated Risk Assessment of Data Provenance and Clinical Free-Text in TREs
Funder: MRC (via DARE UK)
Budget: our share £173k
07/06/2022 – 21/07/2022
Title: SICSA Distinguished Visiting Fellow (Academic or Industrial) Proposal - Daniel Garijo
Funder: SICS
Role: Main applicant
Budget: £1.5k
01/05/21 – 31/10/21
Funder: PETRAS
Title: PARTICIPATORY POLICIES FOR IOT (AT THE EDGE) ETHICS (P-PITEE)
Role: CI in collaboration with University of Lancaster
Budget: total £55k (our share £4,997)
01/01/22 – 31/03/25
Funder: EPSRC
Title: ENHANCING AGRI-FOOD TRANSPARENT SUSTAINABILITY – EATS
Role: researcher CI in collaboration with University of Leeds, University of Dundee, Scottish Rural College
Budget: total £950k (our share £410k)
01/09/20 – 28/02/21
Funder: EPSRC (via Network +)
Title: DATA MANAGEMENT AND INTEROPERABILITY FOR DATA TRUSTS
Role: CI
Budget: total ~40k (our share £10k)
01/05/19 – 31/03/20
Funder: EPSRC (via Network +)
Title; PROOFD-IT: PROVENANCE OF FOOD DELIVERY THROUGH IOT
Role: CI
Budget: total ~40k
12/10/18 – 31/12/18
Funder: SICSA
Title: APPLICATION FOR A PECE BURSARY (travel grant)
Role: sole applicant
Budget: ~£4.5
01/12/15 – 30/06/16
Title: Food Safety Assurance: Combining Provenance & The Internet of Things
Funder: EPSRC (via Network +) & Food Safety Agency
Role CI
Budget: ~£20k
- Teaching
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Courses
- LS3009 Legal Design Clinic on Fair Digital Transition
Teaching Responsibilities
Courses taught in previous years:
CS2020 Software Programming
CS551g Data Mining and Visualisation
CS551s Web Development
Non-course Teaching Responsibilities
I lead the Aberdeen Software Factory, where we give students hands-on, real-world experience by working on a variety of short-term projects—from developing a simple web app for a research initiative to creating an MVP for an emerging startup.
*** If you need student SOFTWARE PROGRAMMING SUPPORT for your project email asf@abdn.ac.uk ***
