Kate Devlin
Kate Devlin, born Adela Katharine Devlin is a Northern Irish computer scientist specialising in Artificial intelligence and Human–computer interaction (HCI). She is best known for her work on human sexuality and robotics and was co-chair of the annual Love and Sex With Robots convention in 2016 held in London and was founder of the UK's first ever sex tech hackathon held in 2016 at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London and is the author of Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots in addition to several academic papers. Education Devlin began her university career in the humanities and graduated from Queen's University Belfast in 1997 with a BA (Honours) degree in archaeology. After deciding that archaeology presented her with limited future prospects, she returned to Queen's University to study computer science, and in 1999 she was awarded an MSc in that subject. She then moved to The University of Bristol, where in 2004 she was awarded a PhD in computer science. Devlin became a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London and a departmental Senior Tutor. and on 1 September 2018, Devlin became the Senior Lecturer in Social & Cultural AI in the Digital Humanities department at King's College London. Academic career In 2003 Devlin began researching computer graphics in archaeology at Bristol University, rendering 3D computer models of archaeological sites such as at Pompeii with attention to realistically rendering lighting effects caused by the spectral composition of light sources available at the time period in history. This involved experimental archaeology, recreating light sources and analysing the spectral range for each type of candle or fuel lamp. From 2007 Devlin worked in the field of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence at Goldsmiths, which included programming, graphics and animation. In 2018 she became Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London. In 2015 Devlin spoke to news broadcasters in the UK about institutionalised sexism within science research and academia after comments made by Sir Tim Hunt regarding women scientists working in mixed laboratories. While Devlin, along with many other commentators, acknowledged the comments to be 'banter' she expressed the frustration that many women have with sexism in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and jokingly tweeted that she couldn't chair a departmental meeting because she was "too busy swooning and crying." Devlin also speaks publicly and writes to encourage more women to pursue technology careers. In 2016 Devlin co-chaired the International Congress on Love and Sex With Robots held in London, UK, an annual conference held since 2014, co-founded by Adrian David Cheok and David Levy, writer of the book of the same name, Love and Sex with Robots. Also, in 2016, Devlin founded the first UK sex technology (sex tech) hackathon, a conference where scientists, students, academics and other people in the sex tech industry meet to pool