Dr Christopher Norval

Biography

I am a Lecturer of Computer Science as part of the Joint Institute with South China Normal University.

My research interests include the societal and ethical issues of emerging technologies, the auditability of AI systems, data mining and exploratory data analysis, and the effective use of experimental design and statistical testing within Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research.

I completed my PhD at the University of Dundee in 2014, exploring reasons why older adults were less likely to use social networking sites than younger adults. Issues (such as privacy and security concerns, a lack of skill, negative preconceptions) were identified from user studies, and recommendations for the designers of such sites were derived to mitigate or avoid these issues. 

After completing my PhD, I worked in the games industry as a data analyst for two years, where I designed comparative evaluations (A/B tests), conducted exploratory data analysis, and worked with the designers of the games, advocating for a data driven perspective. 

I then joined the University of St Andrews as a postdoctoral researcher, on a project to predict when social media users would likely consent to having their data used for health research. This research highlighted that while it was possible to predict participant consent decisions using machine learning, it raised a number of ethical and practical considerations that those interested in analysing social media data for health research need to consider.

I then joined the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Centre project at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, where I worked on a number of projects exploring various tech law concerns with regard to emerging technologies. During this time, I led a number of projects looking at the auditability of AI/ML systems, IoT, data protection and data rights, consequential AR/VR/XR systems, and other emerging concerns that pervasive technologies raise. 

Research Overview

My research interests include societal and ethical issues of emerging technologies, the practical application of machine learning techniques, exploratory data analytics, and the effective use of experimental design and statistical testing within HCI research.