Data Champions Search

Didem cares about the future of the world and nature. She is a computer scientist with a Ph.D. in mechatronics, which can give you an idea about how much she loves to talk about the future and emerging technologies. She is a data person, always finds a way to talk about how important it is to know your data, use it to make decisions and at some point expect her to talk about art, visualizations and visual analytics. Didem is a person who does not hesitate to talk about inequalities and point out her ethical concerns. She dreams of a better world and actively works on improving inequalities regardless of their nature. She is an analytical thinker with a passion for design thinking, a researcher with a future perspective, an engineer who likes problems more than solutions and a teacher who likes to play during lectures. She is a good reader, sailor, divemaster, photographer and drone pilot. 

Didem's current research interest is on data science for cyber-physical systems including interoperability assessment, data analytics, knowledge discovery, information visualization and visual analytics. Didem’s research focuses on blending systems thinking, future studies and design thinking approaches to develop methods, methodologies and implementations for the purpose of overcoming interoperability, complexity and sustainability challenges related to cyber-physical systems such as smart infrastructure systems, autonomous vehicles and collaborative robots. She works on data, visual analytics and digital twins to improve the interoperability between these systems, to make these systems more understandable and to develop sustainable systems for a better future.

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute, where I use a combination of novel satellite imaging techniques, airborne geophysical observations and climate-ocean model data to investigate the key climatic drivers responsible for controlling the rapid deterioration of the Antarctic Ice Sheet since the onset of the satellite era (~1970-present). As such, I have a range of experience in the handling, processing and visualisation of complex geospatial datasets, and have experience in the usage of several different computer programming languages to do this. My experience also includes the long-term archiving and preservation of data to support scientific reproducibility, ranging from the publication of small, project-specific datasets to institutional collections (including assisting with the recent publication of SPRI’s historical Arctic airborne radio echo sounding data archives).

I am a Research Laboratory Manager at the department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, at the University of Cambridge. I studied Engineering in Telecommunications and later a MSc in Biomedical Engineering. During my masters I developed research in the area of bionanotechnology at the University of Barcelona. 

I hold a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Leicester, UK. My research focused on the study of neural signatures related to cognitive illusions.

Additional areas of expertise:

EEG data

I am a researcher and educator in paleoanthropology and biology. Currently, I am developing machine learning and AI applications for human evolutionary studies with the University of Cambridge Leverhulme Center for Human Evolutionary Studies and the Alan Turing Institute.