Christopher Burr

Dr Christopher Burr is a Senior Researcher in Trustworthy Systems (TPS Programme) and Head of the Innovation and Impact Hub (Turing Research and Innovation Cluster in Digital Twins).

He specialises in the trustworthy and ethical design, development, and deployment of data-driven technologies. He is also interested in exploring and understanding how data-driven technologies affect our decision-making and social institutions (e.g. factors that undermine trust in algorithmic systems).

He is the Head of the Innovation and Impact Hub for the Turing Research and Innovation Cluster in Digital Twins (TRIC-DT). The Innovation and Impact Hub team are responsible for supporting and advancing the TRIC-DT’s goals of democratising access to digital twin technology by providing open and reproducible computational and social tools, and also building a multidisciplinary community of practice in digital twinning.

He is also a project lead for the Turing Commons—a platform, community, and repository of resources that are designed to build skills and capabilities across all areas of society (e.g. digital and data literacy). This project is a key skills and training initiative within the Turing, and seeks to build openly accessible resources to improve awareness and understanding of the ethical and societal issues surrounding data-driven technologies, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.

In 2023, Dr Burr will lead the Trustworthy and Ethical Assurance of Digital Healthcare project—a collaborative project with the Assuring Autonomy International Programme (University of York) to build on and harmonise existing research and work in trustworthy and ethical assurance, including the development of open and reproducible tools that help project teams meet ethical and regulatory best practices in health research and healthcare for a range of digital and data-driven technologies.

Between 2021 and 2022 he was the Principal Investigator for the Trustworthy Assurance of Digital Mental Healthcare project, funded by the UKRI’s Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub. The goal of this project was to develop a method for assuring ethical goals and claims associated with the design, development, deployment, and use of data-driven technologies in mental healthcare.

Prior to starting at The Alan Turing Institute, he held postdoctoral research posts at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford (2018–19), working as part of the Data Ethics Lab, and the Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol (2017–18). He completed his PhD in Philosophy of Cognitive Science at the University of Bristol in 2017, funded by a European Research Council scholarship.

He has previously advised and worked with organisations including the Office for Artificial Intelligence, Council of Europe, Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Ada Lovelace Institute, Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, the Department of Health and Social Care, and has conducted interviews with media organisations including the Observer, New York Times, BBC, and Vox.