Alexander Turner

CV

(i) Present position

Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Nottingham – Feb 2020 – Present

• My primary research focus is on the development of artificial intelligence tools to help improve the diagnosis and treatment for suffers of movement disorders, with a particular focus on improving the diagnosis times for children with cerebral palsy. My secondary focus is on the development of novel artificial intelligence techniques to help develop transparency in the decision-making process of artificial intelligence tools. This work was built upon my EPSRC new investigator award, which commenced in 2019.

(ii) Previous Positions

Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence, Department of Computer Science, University of Hull (Aug 2016 – Jan 2020)

• My research fell into two key areas. Data science for the design of diagnostic and assistive devices for sufferers of movement disorders and the design of transparent artificial intelligence which can provide a rationale for its decision-making process.
• I was co-director of the AI and big data analytics research group which we built from scratch from January 2017. It now contains 9 fully funded PhD students, 5 of which I was primary supervisor for and 1 PDRA for which I was line manager for.

Research Associate, Department of Electronic Engineering, University of York (Jan 2015 – July 2016)

• This research involved development of transparent artificial intelligence and how this can be used to understand real world complex tasks and its applications in movement disorders and the control and analysis of complex systems.

Research Fellow, Department of Medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Feb 2014 – Dec 2014)

• Funded by a competitively awarded ERCIM fellowship, this work Applied artificial intelligence to the analysis of multiple RNA and CHIP sequencing data sets to understand stem cell development.

Research Associate, Department of Electronic Engineering, University of York (Oct 2013 – Jan 2014)

• This research involved development of a swarm of interacting, cognitive, autonomous robots. My work focused on the design and implementation of a real time operating system to control the robots.

(iii) Qualifications

• Ph.D. Electronic Engineering, University of York (2010-2013)

Title : Artificial Biochemical Networks: Computational Models and Architectures
Development of genetically inspired artificial intelligence which can chance its topology autonomously during execution. I was awarded the K.M. Stott memorial prize for excellence in scientific research.

• MSc. Computer Science, University of York (2009-2010) (Distinction)

Focused on artificial intelligence and biologically inspired computation. My project developed artificial intelligence to play no-limit Texas hold’em poker.

• BSc. Computer Science, University of Hull (2005-2008) (2:1)

Focused on software development and artificial intelligence.

• Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practise (PGCAP), University of Hull, 2016-2017 (Pass)

Used artificial intelligence to detect student dropout in computer science cohorts.

(iv) Publications - Journal articles

1. Turner, A.; Hayes, S.; Sharkey, D. The Classification of Movement in Infants for the Autonomous Monitoring of Neurological Development. Sensors 2023, 23, 4800.
2. Rahemtulla, Z., Turner, A., Oliveira, C., Kaner, J., Dias, T. and Hughes-Riley, T., 2023. The design and engineering of a fall and near-fall detection electronic textile. Materials, 16(5), p.1920.
3. Mincarelli, L.F., Chapman, E.C., Rotchell, J.M., Turner, A.P. and Wollenberg Valero, K.C., 2022. Sex and gametogenesis stage are strong drivers of gene expression in Mytilus edulis exposed to environmentally relevant plasticiser levels and pH 7.7. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, pp.1-13.
4. Lugoda, P., Hayes, S.C., Hughes-Riley, T., Turner, A., Martins, M.V., Cook, A., Raval, K., Oliveira, C., Breedon, P. and Dias, T., 2022. Classifying gait alterations using an instrumented smart sock and deep learning. IEEE Sensors Journal, 22(23), pp.23232-23242.
5. Valero, K.C., Garcia‐Porta, J., Irisarri, I., Feugere, L., Bates, A., Kirchhof, S., Jovanović Glavaš, O., Pafilis, P., Samuel, S.F., Turner, A and Vences, M., 2022. Functional genomics of abiotic environmental adaptation in lacertid lizards and other vertebrates. Journal of Animal Ecology, 91(6), pp.1163-1179.
6. L Mincarelli, J Rotchell, E Chapman, A Turner, K Valero, “Consequences of combined exposure to thermal stress and the plasticiser DEHP in Mytilus spp. differ by sex”, Marine Pollution Bulletin, 170, 112624, 2021
7. A Schoene, A Turner, G De Mel, N Dethlefs, “Hierarchical Multiscale Recurrent Neural Networks for Detecting Suicide Notes”, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 2021
8. J Garcia-Porta, A Turner, K Wollenberg Valero et al, 2020“Environmental temperatures shape thermal physiology as well as diversification and genome-wide substitution rates in lizards” Nature communications, 2 10(1), pp.1-12, 2020
9. Turner, Alexander, and Stephen Hayes. "The classification of minor gait alterations using wearable sensors and deep learning." IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 66, no. 11 (2019): 3136-3145.
10. A Turner, A Tyrrell, M Trefzer, M Lones, “Evolutionary acquisition of complex traits in artificial epigenetic networks” Biosystems 176, 17-26, 2019
11. A Turner, L Caves, S Stepney, A Tyrrell, M Lones, “Artificial Epigenetic Networks: Automatic Decomposition of Dynamical Control Tasks Using Topological Self-Modification”, IEEE Transactions on neural networks and learning systems, 28 (2016)
12. A Turner, M Lones, M Trefzer, S Smith, S Jamieson, J Alty, J Cosgrove, A Tyrrell, “Using epigenetic networks for the analysis of movement associated with levodopa therapy for Parkinson's disease”, Biosystems 146, 35-42, 2016
13. M Lones, L Fuente, A Turner, L Caves, S Stepney, S Smith, A Tyrrell, “Artificial biochemical networks: Evolving dynamical systems to control dynamical systems”, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 18 (2), 145-166, 2014
14. M Lones, A Turner, L Fuente, S Stepney, L Caves, A Tyrrell, “Biochemical connectionism”, Natural Computing 12 (4), 453-472, 2013
15. A Turner, M Lones, L Fuente, S Stepney, L Caves, AM Tyrrell, “The incorporation of epigenetics in artificial gene regulatory networks”, BioSystems 112 (2), 56-62, 2013
16. L Fuente, M Lones, A Turner, S Stepney, L Caves, A Tyrrell, “Computational models of signalling networks for non-linear control”, Bio Systems, 112 (2), 122-130, 2013
17. L Howarth, H Wood, A Turner, B Beukers-Stewart, “Complex habitat boosts scallop recruitment in a fully protected marine reserve”, Marine Biology 158 (8), 1767-1780, 2011

(iv) Publications - Conference Publications

18. Neri, F. and Turner, A., 2023, April. A Fitness Landscape Analysis Approach for Reinforcement Learning in the Control of the Coupled Inverted Pendulum Task. In Applications of Evolutionary Computation: 26th European Conference, EvoApplications 2023, Held as Part of EvoStar 2023, Brno, Czech Republic, April 12–14, 2023, Proceedings (pp. 69-85). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
19. Turner, A., Scott, D. and Hayes, S., 2022, July. The Classification of Multiple Interacting Gait Abnormalities Using Insole Sensors and Machine Learning. In 2022 IEEE International Conference on Digital Health (ICDH) (pp. 69-76). IEEE.
20. Turner, A. and Wollenberg Valero, K.C., 2022. Stochasticity Improves Evolvability in Artificial Gene Regulatory Networks. In Advances in Computational Intelligence Systems: Contributions Presented at the 20th UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence, September 8-10, 2021, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK 20 (pp. 83-94). Springer International Publishing.
21. G Lacey, A Schoene, N Dethlefs, A Turner, “Improving the Transparency of Deep Neural Networks using Artificial Epigenetic Molecules”, In IJCCI (pp. 167-175), 2020
22. A Schoene, G Lacey, A Turner, N Dethlefs, "Bidirectional Dilated LSTM with Attention for Fine-grained Emotion Classification in Tweets." In AffCon in AAAI (pp. 100-117). 2020
23. A Schoene, G Lacey, A Turner, N Dethlefs, “Dilated lstm with attention for classification of suicide notes”, Proceedings of the tenth international workshop on health text mining and information analysis, pp 136-145, 2019
24. G Lacey, A Schoene, N Dethlefs, A Turner, “Modularity Within Artificial Gene Regulatory Networks”, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, 2019
25. A Turner, G Lacey, A Schoene, N Dethlefs, “Evolutionary Constraint in Artificial Gene Regulatory Networks”, UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence, 29-40, 2018
26. N Dethlefs, A Turner, “Deep Text Generation–Using Hierarchical Decomposition to Mitigate the Effect of Rare Data Points”, International Conference on Language, Data and Knowledge, 290-298, 2017
27. A Turner, N Dethlefs, “Transparency Of Execution Using Epigenetic Networks”, Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Artificial Life, 2017
28. A Turner, M Trefzer, M Lones, A Tyrrell, “Evolving efficient solutions to complex problems using the artificial epigenetic network”, International Conference on Information Processing in Cells and Tissues, 153-165, 2015
29. A Turner, M Trefzer, A Tyrrell, 2015, December. Modelling epigenetic mechanisms to capture dynamical topological morphology: applications in edge detection. In IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (pp. 1229-1235). IEEE 2015
30. L Fuente, M Lones, A Turner, L Caves, S Stepney, A Tyrrell, “Adaptive robotic gait control using coupled artificial signalling networks, hopf oscillators and inverse kinematics”, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), 1435-1442, 2013
31. A Turner, M Lones, L Fuente, S Stepney, L Caves, A Tyrrell, “The Artificial Epigenetic Network”, IEEE International Conference on Evolvable Systems, 66-72 2013
32. LA Fuente, MA Lones, AP Turner, S Stepney, LS Caves, AM Tyrrell, “Evolved artificial signalling networks for the control of a conservative complex dynamical system”, International Conference on Information Processing in Cells and Tissues, 38-49, 2012
33. A Turner, M Lones, L Fuente, S Stepney, L Caves, A Tyrrell, “Using artificial epigenetic regulatory networks to control complex tasks within chaotic systems”, Information Processing in Cells and Tissues, 1-11, 2012