HIDE Lab

Core Team

Principal Investigator

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Dr. Stefan Sarkadi is Associate Professor in AI for Defence and Security and RAEng UK IC Research Fellow at the University of Lincoln. Previously, he was Proleptic Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Informatics at King’s College London. His background is multidisciplinary, built on a PhD in Computer Science from King’s College London, a Master’s in Cognitive Science from the University of Edinburgh, and a Bachelor’s in Philosophy from the West University of Timisoara.

   

Co-Investigators

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Dr. Peta Masters is a RAEng UK IC Research Fellow. Peta gained her doctorate at RMIT in Melbourne with a thesis on goal recognition and deception in path-planning and her first paper, with supervisor Sebastian Sardina, won the Pragnesh Jay Modi Best Student Paper Award at AAMAS17. She worked on Deceptive AI at the University of Melbourne with Liz Sonenberg and a multi-disciplinary team under the direction of Wally Smith, a psychologist and amateur magician. She was previously a researcher with the Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) Hub at King’s College London where she was PI for the TAS Benchmarks Library and Critical Review.

   

PostDocs

Dr. Tarun Gangil is PostDoc Research Associate at the University of Lincolnin the Centre for Defence and Security AI. His expertise spans computer vision, deep learning, NLP, and medical imaging, passionate about building AI systems that deliver real-world healthcare impact. My work bridges research and deployment, from developing cutting-edge models to implementing scalable MLOps pipelines and cloud-native solutions.

   

Dr. Callum Berger is a PostDoc Research Associate at the University of Lincolnin the Centre for Defence and Security AI. His PhD research bridged computer science and film/media studies, establishing a novel approach to developing adaptive virtual reality (VR) horror experiences.

   

PhD Students

Adithya Venkatadri Hulagadri (Adi) (co-supervision with Dr. Gerard Canal (second) @KCL). Adi is a PhD researcher at King’s and Imperial College London in the UKRI Safe and Trusted AI Centre for Doctoral Training. His research focuses on the emergence of deception and Theory of Mind in multi-agent systems from an emergent communication perspective. Before starting his PhD, Adi did an MSc in Cognitive Science at The University of Edinburgh and was an AI engineer at AI Singapore based at NUS.

   

Andrei Bogdan Balcau (Stefan co-supervision with Prof. Carmine Ventre (main) @KCL). Andrei Balcau is a PhD researcher at King’s and Imperial College London in the UKRI Safe and Trusted AI Centre for Doctoral Training. His research focuses on creating digital twins for socio-technical complex systems. Before his PhD studies, Andrei received a First Class (Honours) Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) MSci at King’s College London. Andrei’s main interests lie at the intersection of Computer Science and Economics, tackling AI alignment and surveillance problems.

   

Visiting Researchers and Students

Giacomo De Colle is a PhD researcher at the University at Bufallo in the US. His research focuses on creating ontologies and neurosymbolic frameworks and tools for Cyber Threat Intelligence.

   

Parisa Salmani is a PhD researcher at PhD Student at McMaster University in Canada. Her research interests lie in the intersection between computer science and Artificial Intelligence, with a particular focus on trustworthiness and fairness in AI.

   

External Collaborators