Prof Ibrahim Habli BSc (AUB), MSc, PhD (York)
Professor

Interests

My expertise is in the design and assurance of safety-critical systems, with a particular focus on AI and autonomous systems (e.g. for clinical diagnosis and autonomous and connected driving).

I am the Director of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in AI Safety (SAINTS) and the Research Director of the Centre for Assuring Autonomy (CfAA). I am also the Principal investigator on the UKRI-funded project Assuring Responsibility for Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (AR-TAS) and an investigator on the TAS Node in Resilience (REASON).

My work is highly interdisciplinary, with active collaborations with ethicists, lawyers, clinicians, health scientists and economists. I conduct empirical and industry-based research and have co-led research work with engineers including from Rolls-Royce, NASA and Jaguar Land Rover (see my publications here).

I work closely with the National Health Service (NHS) in England on safety assurance of AI in healthcare. In 2015, I was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Fellowship to collaborate with NHS Digital on evidence-based means for assuring the safety of digital health systems.

I have served on several national and international safety standardisation committees (DS/1 Dependability committee at BSI, EUROCAE/RTCA committee for aerospace guidance DO-178C, MISRA safety cases committee and GSN standardisation group). I also contributed to the UK response to the automotive safety standard ISO-26262.

I previously worked at the Rolls-Royce UTC in Systems and Software Engineering. Prior to that, I was in industry. I worked on a number of large-scale Geographic Information Systems, mainly for the energy sector. In 2009, I completed my PhD in Computer Science from the University of York. The topic of my PhD was model-based assurance of safety-critical product lines.

Academic citizenship
- Deputy Head of Department of Computer Science and Director of Research: 2021-2024
- Chair of Graduate Research Studies in Computer Science: 2019-2021
- Co-leader of Distance Learning PhD in Computer Science: 2016-2018
- Programme Leader of the MSc in Safety-Critical Systems Engineering with Automotive Applications (funded by Jaguar Land Rover): 2016-2018
- Programme Leader of the MSc in Gas Turbine Control (funded by Rolls-Royce): 2010-2012

Career

Departmental and University Roles

• Director of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in AI Safety (SAINTS)
• Research Director of the Centre for Assuring Autonomy (CfAA)