IAPP Data Protection Intensive: UK 2025

Jim Al-Khalili is an academic, author, broadcaster and one of the UK’s best-known science communicators. In the U.K., he is most familiar as the host of the long-running BBC Radio 4 production, “The Life Scientific.” As an academic, Al-Khalili is a quantum physicist at the University of Surrey where he is distinguished professor emeritus. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1989 and has published over 150 papers in the field.

As well as his regular articles in the media, he has written 15 books on popular science and the history of science, between them translated into 26 languages. His book on medieval arabic science, “Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science,” was shortlisted for the Warwick Prize, and his 2020 book, “The World According to Physics,” was shortlisted for the Royal Society Book Prize. Many people will also know him from the TV science documentaries he has hosted over the past two decades, such as “Atom,” “Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity,” “Everything and Nothing,” and the BAFTA-nominated “Chemistry: A Volatile History.”

Al-Khalili is a past president of both the British Science Association and Humanists UK, and is a recipient of the Royal Society Michael Faraday medal and the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar medal, the Institute of Physics Kelvin medal and the Stephen Hawking medal. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Physics and the Institution of Engineering and Technology. He received an OBE from the Queen in 2007 and a CBE in 2021, both for “services to science and public engagement in STEM.” He has received honorary doctorates from nine universities. He is a trustee and commissioner on the board of the 1851 Royal Commission and a Fellow of the Science Museums Group.

Dr. Susie Alegre is an international human rights lawyer, author and keynote speaker with over 25 years’ experience working on human rights and accountability around the world. Her work focuses on the impact of technology and the digital world on human rights including our freedom to think for ourselves.

She is the author of “Human Rights, Robot Wrongs” (Atlantic Books, 2024) in which she explores the impact AI may have on our fundamental human rights, and the ethical dilemmas of emerging technologies. Her previous book “Freedom to Think” (Atlantic Books 2022) received widespread recognition and was named a Financial Times Technology Book of the Year 2022, a Telegraph New Science Book of the Year 2022 and shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize 2023. Alegre is a barrister and Associate at Garden Court Chambers in London. She is also the Director of Alegre International, Founder and Director of the Island Rights Initiative and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

Her international career has included work for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe as an adviser on human rights and counterterrorism and the European Union on combating corruption in East Africa. She has advised civil society operations including Amnesty International, JUSTICE, Avaaz and SumOfUs and 5Rights, governmental and intergovernmental agencies on human rights, international law and the development of law and policy around emerging technologies. A former an ombudsman at the Financial Ombudsman Service and Interception of Communications Commissioner for the Isle of Man, she currently holds senior judicial and oversight positions including being a Member of the Commission for Control of Interpol’s Files.

She is a regular contributor to print and broadcast media including the Wired World, the Financial Times, The New Statesman, TIME Magazine, City AM, The Irish Times, Sydney Morning Herald, BBC and Sky News.

Since January 2022, John Edwards has served as the sixth U.K. Information Commissioner. Before this, he served as New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner for eight years, building an international reputation in data protection and privacy, including chairing the now Global Privacy Assembly. He also worked in a range of roles including as a policy advisor to the NZ Government, a lawyer for over 20 years in the public and private sector, and even had a stint as a mountaineer.

Edwards’ vision and mission is for the ICO to be a regulator that empowers people to share information for personal and public benefit, and for institutions to use information to invest and innovate in the digital economy safely.

As a whole economy regulator responding to emerging cross border data protection issues, Edwards is laser-focused on delivering better, quicker and impactful regulatory interventions in AI and biometrics, children’s privacy and AdTech and online tracking.

Edwards’ motto: “We spend once at the centre prompting savings for thousands of businesses across the economy.”

Kate Jones is the Chief Executive Officer of the Digital Regulatory Cooperation Forum. Jones leads this innovative team, working to increase and deepen coordination between regulators of online services and technology for the benefit of both businesses and their customers.

Before joining the DRCF, Jones was an expert consultant and researcher on the governance of emerging technologies, with particular regard to human rights law, public international law and diplomacy. She was an Associate Fellow with the International Law Programme at Chatham House, Senior Associate with Oxford Information Labs, and member of the advisory board of an AI ethics company. She has published and spoken widely on aspects of national and international tech governance, with specialisms in artificial intelligence, disinformation and foreign interference, and the role of technical standards.

In her work, Jones brings to bear her many years of experience as a legal adviser and diplomat with the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, including as Legal Adviser to the U.K. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva and U.K. Deputy Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. She also draws on her experience of leadership, skills and technical expertise as Director of Oxford University’s Diplomatic Studies Programme and as Course Director and Advisory Board member of the Centre for Political and Diplomatic Studies. Jones took her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in law at the University of Oxford and qualified as a U.K. solicitor at Norton Rose.

Carl Öhman is an assistant professor in political science at Uppsala university, Sweden. He earned his PhD in 2020 from the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Luciano Floridi. His research spans across several topics, including the politics and ethics of AI, deepfakes and digital remains, and has been covered by media outlets such as New York Times, The Economist, BBC and TIME Magazine. In 2020, he was named the U.K.’s number one early career researcher in the arts and humanities by Scopus.