PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Helen Hastie

Also known as Helen Wright Hastie

Helen Hastie is a computer scientist who studies how people and robots communicate and come to trust each other, with work spanning spoken dialogue systems, explainable AI and human-robot interaction. Trained in linguistics, she completed a PhD on automatic speech recognition at Edinburgh's Centre for Speech Technology Research in 2000 and then worked at AT&T Research Labs and Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Lab in New Jersey. At Heriot-Watt University, she coordinated the EU PARLANCE project, which built a spoken dialogue system for interactive search, led the £3m UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node on Trust from 2020, and was co-academic lead of the National Robotarium, which opened in 2022. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2022, she has been Head of the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh since August 2023, where she is also Professor of Human-Robot Interaction.

Timeline

  1. 1995–2000

    Linguistics and a speech PhD

    She earns an MA in Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh in 1995 and an MS in Computational Linguistics at Georgetown University in 1996. Back in Edinburgh, she completes a PhD at the Centre for Speech Technology Research in 2000, with a thesis on modelling prosodic and dialogue information for automatic speech recognition.

  2. 2001–2005

    AT&T and Lockheed Martin labs

    She joins AT&T Research Labs in New Jersey as a research associate in 2001 and moves in 2002 to the Advanced Technology Lab at Lockheed Martin, also in New Jersey. Promoted to senior member there in 2005, she obtains a number of patents during her industry years.

  3. 2008–2013

    The PARLANCE dialogue system

    In January 2008, she becomes a research fellow in informatics at the University of Edinburgh, and she joins Heriot-Watt University in computer science in 2009. She coordinates the EU project PARLANCE, and in August 2013 she and colleagues including Oliver Lemon and Verena Rieser present the PARLANCE system, a data-driven, incremental spoken dialogue system for interactive search, at SIGDIAL in Metz.

  4. 2017–2018

    A Leverhulme fellowship and ORCA

    In 2017, she receives a Royal Academy of Engineering/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship, and while on the fellowship, looking into explainable AI and trust for interactions with autonomous systems, she is promoted to full professor in Heriot-Watt's Computer Science Department. As a work package lead of the EPSRC-funded ORCA Hub for offshore energy robotics, she works on keeping humans in the loop with remote robots in hazardous environments. In March 2018, she and colleagues present the ORCA Hub's case for transparent autonomous systems at the Explainable Robotic Systems Workshop of the ACM Human-Robot Interaction conference.

  5. 2020–2024

    The TAS Node on Trust

    In November 2020, she takes the lead of the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node on Trust, a £3m consortium of Heriot-Watt, Imperial College London and the University of Manchester that studies trust between people and autonomous systems such as self-driving cars, autonomous wheelchairs and cobots. She is also principal investigator of the EPSRC HUME Prosperity Partnership.

  6. 2021–2022

    Opening the National Robotarium

    She directs the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, which wins the Minerva Informatics Equality Award for diversity in robotics in 2021. As co-academic lead of the National Robotarium, she gives a keynote speech in September 2022 when the £22.4m robotics and AI facility opens on Heriot-Watt's Edinburgh campus, in partnership with the University of Edinburgh.

  7. 2022

    Royal Society of Edinburgh fellowship

    In March 2022, she is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy, having been a founding member of its Young Academy. Women in Robotics names her one of the top 50 women in robotics in 2022. In 2022, RO-MAN gives her paper "We are all Individuals: The Role of Robot Personality and Human Traits in Trustworthy Interaction" the KROS Interdisciplinary Research Award in Social Human-Robot Interaction.

  8. Since August 2023

    Head of Informatics at Edinburgh

    Appointed in May 2023, she succeeds Jane Hillston as Head of the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh in August 2023, the third woman to lead the school after Johanna Moore and Hillston. She is also Professor of Human-Robot Interaction there, and in April 2026 she talks about trustworthy robots with Jim Al-Khalili on BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Helen Hastie - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Professor Helen Hastie appointed the new Head of School of Informatics informatics.ed.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Prof. Helen Hastie | Edinburgh Centre for Robotics edinburgh-robotics.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. Professor Helen Hastie | Chameleon Events chameleonevents.co.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. Professor Helen Hastie : Royal Society of Edinburgh rse.org.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Demonstration of the PARLANCE system: a data-driven incremental, spoken dialogue system for interactive search - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. Helen F. Hastie: About Me homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  8. Helen Hastie Promoted to Professor | Edinburgh Centre for Robotics edinburgh-robotics.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  9. The ORCA Hub: Explainable Offshore Robotics through Intelligent Interfaces arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  10. Heriot-Watt’s National Robotarium to lead on developing the ‘robots of the future’ | FutureScot futurescot.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  11. The National Robotarium is officially open for business! | Heriot-Watt University hw.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  12. Four Heriot-Watt professors become RSE fellows | Heriot-Watt University hw.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  13. BBC Radio 4 - The Life Scientific, Helen Hastie on the future of human-robot relations bbc.co.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.