Meet the team
The EDUCATE Ventures Research team consists of educational researchers, entrepreneurs, technology experts and academics in the fields of AI, education and EdTech. We envision an EdTech ecosystem populated by research-minded enterprises, building excellent, evidence-informed learning tools that empower human intelligence.
Professor Rose Luckin, Founder
Rosemary (Rose) Luckin is Professor of Learner Centred Design at UCL Knowledge Lab. She was named one of the 20 most influential people in education in the Seldon List, 2017.
Rose is Founder of EDUCATE Ventures Research Ltd., a London hub for start-ups, researchers and educators developing evidence-based educational technology. She is past president and current treasurer of the International Society for AI in Education and co-founder of the Institute for Ethical AI in Education. Rose’s 2018 book, Machine Learning and Human Intelligence: The Future of Education for the 21st Century, describes how AI supports teaching and learning. Prior to joining the UCL Knowledge Lab in 2006, Rose was Pro-Vice Chancellor for Teaching and Learning at the University of Sussex.
Morgan Dee, Director of AI & Data Science
Morgan Dee is the Director of AI and Data Science at EDUCATE Ventures Research. She leads the Data Science team in using data and AI to extract meaningful insights about human learning. She holds a Master's degree in Data Science with AI from The University of Exeter, where she received recognition for her outstanding academic performance. She also trained as a secondary school Physics teacher at the Institute of Education after completing her Master's degree in Astrophysics from The University of Manchester. With a decade of teaching experience spanning across diverse locations including the UK, Nepal, Malawi, Hong Kong, and Japan, Morgan has developed a deep commitment to the ethical use of AI in Education. Her primary goal is to unlock the full potential of every learner, ensuring their growth and success.
Dr Ekaterina Cooper, Director of Research & Training
Ekaterina is Director of Research & Evaluation at EDUCATE Ventures Research. She has worked with EdTech companies since 2018 helping them cultivate a research mindset and integrating evidence-based processes into product and business development. She has a PhD in Developmental Psychology and MSc in Public Health. Her area of expertise is research methods and psychometrics, developed over the last 15 years through her involvement in a wide range of research, including randomise-control trials and international research.
Ibrahim Bashir, Technical Projects Manager
Ibrahim Bashir is a Software Developer currently working as a Data Engineer. Ibrahim is a Fulbright fellow and has a Masters in Computer Science from Louisiana State University. His work in the last 9 years has focused on the intersection of Big Data, Machine Learning and IoT. Once a passionate hobby roboticist, he hasn’t gone near one in years after 9 of the 12 machines he built from scratch for a swarm robotics project wouldn’t play nice and fried their circuit boards.
Dina Foster, Head of Educator AI Training
Dina is an experienced former secondary school Deputy Head teacher and is currently a doctoral candidate at UCL with a research focus on how schools develop AI strategy to harness the benefits of AI, and augment teaching and learning. She gained her MA in Education and Technology and also holds a Master’s in Teaching, both from the Institute of Education. Dina is particularly interested in supporting school leaders with the development and implementation of successful EdTech strategies to address school priorities.
Dave Turnbull, Teacher in Residence
Dave’s seven years’ experience in primary classrooms, including 5 years as his school’s Computing Curriculum Lead, has given him a front-row view to the challenges schools face in developing coherent digital strategies. As Teacher-in-Residence at EDUCATE Ventures, he’s helping to build next generation CPD for leaders and teachers in this space. Dave has a BA in Media Arts from Royal Holloway University of London and worked in film and television prior to completing a PGCE at Goldsmiths, specialising in Early Years. He planned, developed, and implemented his school's digital strategy, enabling him to guide the staff through remote teaching during the pandemic. He recently left teaching to become the primary caretaker for his son, and is excited to apply his experience to system-level digital capacity building in education.
Dr Ali Chaudhry, Research Mentor
Ali is a doctoral researcher at UCL with a research focus on Transparency of AI development pipelines for ed-tech products. His love for education as a profession started 11 years ago when he opened his first charity school for Afghan refugees in the suburbs of Islamabad in Pakistan. His charity currently runs three private schools for disadvantaged communities in Pakistan and has empowered more than two thousand students with basic literacy and arithmetic skills . He is also a founder of an ed-tech startup that supercharges operational management of schools with data driven decisions and an agri-tech startup that is disrupting livestock farming and trading.
Dr Noa Sher, Research Mentor
Noa’s career has progressed along the lines of both applied and academic research. She has over ten years' experience of working with the public and third sectors in the social domain, mainly in the fields of social services and education, and has vast experience in multi-methods evaluative research. Her current work includes guiding management in organisations within the social domain in programme-planning using logic models and in building measurement and evaluation strategies as well as designing outcomes-oriented case management systems. Noa holds an MA in Social and Organisational Psychology and is working towards her PhD on network analysis of collaborative knowledge construction.
Abayomi Akanji, AI & Data Science Team
Abayomi is an EdTech researcher and a creative Software Developer. He is a Queen Elizabeth Young Leader and has a Masters in Education and Technology from UCL. When he was a teenager, he co-founded one of Nigeria's foremost e-testing platforms, PassNG - which has helped over 500K students to achieve success in their college-entrance exams. Abayomi, who holds a Bachelor of Technology Degree in Computer Science (with First-class Honours), is a winner of the Future Award Africa Prize for Education.
Shantini Anthony, Research & Training Team
Shan started her career as an educator with the Ministry of Education, Singapore, teaching English Language and Social Studies to secondary school students. She is passionate about youth and education and previously took a role in government policy and planning, before her recent move to EdTech.
Her first love is the classroom, and in her lessons she often experimented with the integration of EdTech. A strong believer in harnessing technology for quality education, she is an advocate for backing up the technological interventions with evidence.
Rowland Wells, Creative Producer
A good story might write itself, but not without organisation. Running events, relationship managing your community, penning Tweets, SOPs, agendas, and coordinating projects is what Rowland does best, and they have been doing it since 2003. An occasional welfare officer, waterer and potter of office flora, AV technician, note-taker and EdTech crackerjack, Rowland also specialises in recruitment, quality management, pitch decks, graphic design, marcomms, and storytelling. Outside EDUCATE their activities include the hunt for 90s techno, YouTube vlogging, singing and music production, the rescue of tired bumblebees, and they are the comic artist and writer for their creator-owned space opera.
Karine George, Chief Education Advisor
An award-winning, future reimagining educationalist, Karine spent more than 20 years as headteacher in an 'Outstanding' Oftsed-rated school, She is an active research practitioner and ties research, business and education together to transform leadership and pedagogy. An advocate for technology's support of 21st century teaching and learning, she has reported on its use to the DfE, penned numerous articles on educational issues and was a contributing author for 'Sustainable School Transformation: an inside-out school-led approach'.
Associate Professor Mutlu Cukurova, Research Advisor
Mutlu is an academic faculty member at University College London and has a particular interest in researching the potential of emerging Educational Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Learning Analytics to continuously evaluate and support human development. Mutlu supervises PhD projects and teaches the MA in Education and Technology programme at the IOE.
Professor Ben Du Boulay, Research Advisor
Ben is an Emeritus Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the School of Engineering and Informatics at the University of Sussex, UK, and Visiting Professor at University College London. He has two main research areas: the first is the Psychology of Programming where his main work has been in the area of novices learning programming and the development of tools to assist that process, and the second is the application of Artificial Intelligence in Education. Here he is particularly interested in issues around modelling and developing students’ metacognition and motivation.