Chris Barnes is Head of Science of AI at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), where he leads strategic research into AI uncertainty quantification, trustworthy AI, and metrics for data quality. His work supports the development of reliable, transparent, and fit-for-purpose AI systems, particularly in critical sectors such as healthcare and manufacturing. He also holds a professorship in Systems and Synthetic Biology at University College London (UCL), where his academic research focuses on AI, computational modelling, engineering biology, and biomedical applications.
Chris earned both his MSci and PhD in Physics from Imperial College London, specialising in high-energy particle physics. His early postdoctoral work included roles at CERN, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Imperial College London, where he contributed to theoretical systems biology and genomics. He joined UCL in 2012 as a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellow and was appointed Professor in 2019. He has also served as a consultant for a number of companies and charities.
Chris has authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles, with a Google Scholar h-index of 67 and more than 26,000 citations. His research spans statistics, machine learning, engineering biology, systems biology, and quantitative modelling. He was a Turing Fellow, and recipient of the UCL Provost Teaching Award. He has received funding from Wellcome, European Research Council, EPSRC, BBSRC, and Leverhulme Trust.