Watch the highlight film
On 24th June 2026, the University of Southampton hosted the MINDS & SustAI CDT Showcase, bringing together doctoral researchers, industry partners and academic collaborators to see the latest research from both Centres for Doctoral Training. A new highlight film, produced by Impact Media Specialists, captures the day.
Introducing the day
MINDS Deputy Director Professor Stuart Middleton opened the Showcase, setting out why the work being done by MINDS and SustAI researchers matters: for the UK’s AI capabilities, for responsible innovation, and for the organisations looking to collaborate with the next generation of researchers.
“Our students are good to go in a sense of awareness of the responsible use of AI and the effective use of AI.”
Professor Stuart Middleton, MINDS Deputy Director
Research from MINDS CDT
Three MINDS doctoral researchers featured in the film:
- Tyler Clark, on multi-policy reinforcement learning: tackling how to make deep reinforcement learning accessible without specialist computing. Using Super Mario Galaxy as his test case, his work asks whether meaningful reinforcement learning can run on a standard desktop, opening machine learning research to people without access to expensive hardware.
- Jack Hilton-Jones, on autonomous magnetic continuum robots that navigate blood vessels without mechanical pull-wires, for delicate medical interventions. Drawing on statistical analysis of over 1,600 controller events, he has built a hierarchical controller that learns when to trust its own predictions and when to pull back. Jack is working towards a career as a robotics engineer, with a particular interest in space robotics.
- William Hunt, on human-swarm interaction. keeping a human operator meaningfully in control when overseeing many autonomous robots at once. Too much information from a swarm can overwhelm an operator, too little erodes trust in it. William is developing new interfaces and control methods, including using large language models so operators can communicate with a swarm more naturally and respond to changing situations in real time. His work won the Best Demo Award at AAMAS 2023, one of the field’s leading conferences.
MINDS alumnus Jack Dymond also featured, reflecting on how the programme shaped his career at The Alan Turing Institute’s Applied Research Centre for Defence and National Security
MINDS CDT & SustAI CDT 2026 Poster Showcase
Across the programmes
The film also featured SustAI researcher Nadia Hoque, speaking about the experience of being part of a multidisciplinary CDT community, and Francesca Parmigiani, who delivered the Showcase’s opening keynote on research in the AI era. A Southampton alumna who completed her PhD at the Optoelectronics Research Centre in 2006, Francesca now leads Microsoft’s Analog Optical Computing project at Microsoft Research Cambridge. Her keynote traced the progression from fundamental academic research to large-scale industrial innovation.
Interested in working with MINDS or SustAI researchers?
MINDS CDT: mindscdt.southampton.ac.uk
SustAI CDT: sustai.info