Professor Philip Torr (Balliol 1990) has been awarded a prestigious AI2050 Senior Fellowship by Schmidt Sciences, a philanthropic organisation that supports researchers working on projects that enable AI to deliver profound benefits for humanity by 2050.
Professor Torr is Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, specialising in computer vision and machine learning. He leads the Torr Vision Group, which has received major awards at leading international conferences and has contributed significantly to technology transfer in real-world applications.
With the support of the AI2050 Fellowship, Professor Torr aims to develop an AI system capable of working alongside human historians to interpret and explain the past — a ‘digital co-historian’ able to help scholars navigate vast archives and address gaps in historical records.
Reflecting on the award, Professor Torr said: ‘This Fellowship gives me the chance to work on my dream project. The aim is to launch a new discipline of “computational historiography,” where AI and humans collaborate to better understand the forces that have shaped — and may continue to shape — human history.’