QMUL Centre for Human-Centred Computing News

Queen Mary Spinout Dragonfly AI Secures £5m to Accelerate Global Growth

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Queen Mary University of London is celebrating the success of its spinout company Dragonfly AI, which has secured £5 million in new investment to fuel its next phase of international expansion and product innovation. Dragonfly AI, co-founded by Dr Hamit Soyel, Chief Scientist and inventor of the underlying technology, has rapidly become a market leader in predictive visual analytics. The technology is rooted in neuroscience research carried out at Queen Mary, where Dr Soyel and colleagues developed a biological algorithm that predicts human attention in real time. Today, the platform is used by major global brands including Nestlé, Coca-Cola and L'Oréal to optimise the performance of their creative content across digital, in‑store, and omnichannel environments. Speaking about the company's continued success, Dr Soyel said: "Marketing teams compete for three things: attention, emotion and memory. Dragonfly AI is built on a biological algorithm we developed at Queen Mary University of London which allows global brands like Nestlé, Coca‑Cola and L'Oréal to optimise their creative performance across digital, in‑store, and omnichannel environments." He added: "Our science‑led approach can predict how people will see, feel, and remember creative content before it goes live. Crucially, because we rely on neuroscience and not training data, we can avoid the biases which plague many generative AI models. It's why we're trusted by some of the most valuable brands." The new £5m investment—led by 24Haymarket with participation from Guinness Ventures, Foresight for Growing Companies, and others—will enable Dragonfly AI to expand globally and further strengthen its product suite.

New Scientist video: "How Virtual Nightclubs Are Changing Modern Society".

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 23:00:00 GMT

A New Scientist video about the collaboration between the Human Interaction Lab and Target3D has just been released featuring resaerch by Karl Clarke, Ella Cullen and Pat Healey. "The movie Ready Player One introduced us to the futuristic idea of a fully immersive virtual world where meaningful human interactions transcend borders. Now, VR technology has moved beyond science fiction, becoming embedded into our daily lives. New Scientist reporter, Linda Rodriguez-Mcrobbie took a trip to a virtual nightclub and immersed herself in a subculture where social identity can be as expressive as your imagination. Guided by club organiser and VR researcher Karl Clarke, we explore the technology underpinning these virtual experiences. We see how applications in movie production, military training, rehabilitation, and health are driving innovation, we reveal its use for training AI models and how it is being used to better understand social interaction. And, in groundbreaking new VR research, our team joins an experiment in which every aspect of their social presence is manipulated, with dramatic and profound implications. Ready Player One, it would seem, is much closer than we think."

CHCC PhD student wins Best Paper award at prestigious conference

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 23:00:00 GMT

Nirit Bintamini Ben-Meir, a PhD student in Cognitive Science and Human-Centered Computing at the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, has been awarded a Best Paper prize at the ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) 2025 conference for their innovative research on domestic plant care. See the full news story at: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/eecs/news-and-events/news/items/eecs-phd-student-wins-best-paper-award-at-prestigious-conference.html

Groundbreaking research reveals how the brain turns sound into music

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 23:00:00 GMT

Dr. Iran R. Roman, Lecturer of Artificial Intelligence at the Centre for Multimodal AI and Centre for Human-Centered Computing, and a group of external collaborators have revealed a groundbreaking theory explaining how the brain transforms sound into the human experience of music. Read the full story at: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/eecs/news-and-events/news/items/groundbreaking-research-reveals-how-the-brain-turns-sound-into-music.html

New Book: "Understanding the Artificial Intelligence Revolution Between Catastrophe and ...

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Publication date: June 16, 2025 This concise and sober book presents a brief history of AI, explaining in clear language the central engineering innovations that have produced the current revolution, and distinguishing between imagined dangers and the very real problems that AI is creating. Spread across seven short and accessible chapters, the book explains the developments behind deep learning and the applications of deep neural networks (DNNs), addresses both the imagined and actual risks posed by the AI revolution, before outlining rational public policy on AI, covering topics like tech monopolies, disinformation, bias, hate speech, intellectual property rights, and inequality.