Bio: "I am a social scientist interested in the 'making of' digital technologies and policies. In addition, I research and practice interdisciplinary and collaborative inquiry as a way to address societal challenges. My academic journey started with pursuing a BSc in Geography and Geology, where I gained appreciation for nature and understood the urgency of environmental issues. This led me to embarking on a PhD programme where I explored the the notions of sustainability expertise in climate policy design. I was curious to find out how sustainability practitioners work together across sectors and what ""works"" for them when it comes to policy design. These epistemological questions naturally led me to a field called Science and Technology Studies (STS). Before joining Bristol, I worked on two STS projects analysing and evaluating inter- and transdisciplinary projects in robotics and sustainability. While cross-faculty collaborations are the norm in the contemporary academia, for the early-career researchers, they are still often a risky endeavour. What can universities and funders to to build capabilities and networks for collaborative research? Encouraged by the possibilities (if not challenges) of interisciplinarity, I joined the University of Bristol (Cyber Security Research Group) where I work on expertise creation during the implementation of a major industrial cyber security directive (NIS). This is an exciting area, which brings together engineers, IT experts, lawyers, regulators and sector-specific expertise. As the directive pertains to the critical infrastructures, I am mainly interested in the sectors like water, energy or transport. In addition, I continue my service at environmental science-policy interface as a member of Bristol's Advisory Committee on Climate Change where I lead a policy working group."

Bio: Mehdi has been a member of Bristol Robotics Laboratory since 2011 and worked on many EC-FP7 and EPSRC funded projects on Medical Robotics, safe interactive robots, Human-Robot Interaction, Robot Adaptive Behaviour, and Decision Making in joint-action. He had also a close collaboration with Experimental Psychologist and is experienced with Machine Learning and data analysis. He is currently a Research Fellow in the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics where his research is focused on the user-centred design of novel teleoperation interfaces using Virtual Reality.