Generative AI:
Redefining Education Hackathon

Born and raised in south london Brixton, I am an Award winning serial entrepreneur that thrives off providing change and opportunity for others. Running companies for the past 20 years my knowledge and wisdom derives from my experience across the Business, Fashion and education sectors.
My goals and aspirations are to open the first EdTech Hybrid Academy for adults and children along with opening a content creation house for creatives.
I specialise in business entrepreneurship and my mission is to provide as many people from disadvantaged backgrounds the opportunity to for fill their full potential and expose them to career paths within sectors they didn’t believe was possible for them.

With nearly two decades of experience in education – as a teacher, teacher trainer, school moderator, and more recently working in EdTech and assessment – I have dedicated my entire professional life to improving access to quality teaching and learning tools. My time in the physical and virtual classroom includes working in schools in South & Central America, on multinational learning programmes with UNICEF in the Middle East, and designing and delivering engaging and accessible educational content through the use of digital platforms for the BBC World Service. I am currently exploring the role that AI-generated solutions can play in learning assessment tools with Cambridge University Press and Assessment, and am therefore very excited to work closely with future innovators in the AI space

Interpretability @ Anthropic, trying to understand how cutting edge models create their outputs by learning dictionaries of model features. Previously: Economist in the UK Civil Service and SERI MATS under Lee Sharkey.

Anson Cheung is an associate professor at the London Interdisciplinary School, where he is the quantitative methods leads as well as the pastoral lead. He is a theoretical physicist with a background in building models in condensed matter theory. He specialises in complex systems with many-body interactions. He received his undergraduate degree and PhD from Cambridge University where he was a research fellow and remains an affiliated lecturer. Keenly interested in the pedagogical development of problem-solving skills at the secondary-tertiary interface, he is a trustee of the British Physics Olympiad, and he has also served in middle management in secondary schools.

An aspiring jack-of-all, Achyut has 10 years of experience in management consulting, product management., supply chain and logistics and sales. His latest stint saw him lead BCG’s tech perspectives team on GenAI, working topics like model evaluation in applied use cases, economics and scaling in enterprises (including a seminar on the topic at the UN). In his free time, Achyut designs and leads historic walking tours and tries to learn a few words in any new language he can find.

Assistant Professor at the London Interdisciplinary School

Ilana Simons, Sales Director at Braze, responsible for leading a new business sales team.

With extensive experience in the SaaS technology industry, she has worked with both startups and large corporations (ex-Salesforce and Zendesk), specialising in sales and business development across EMEA and South-East Asia. She has a wealth of experience breaking into new markets, segments and building teams to drive performance and success.

Passionate about empowering others in their career journeys, Ilana actively supports those in the tech industry as a leader, mentor and speaker at numerous public events. She believes that lifelong learning plays a crucial role in career development, helping individuals adapt to changes and acquire new skills, to ensure a fulfilling and successful career.

Matt Thompson is a Teaching Fellow at TEDI-London with expertise in user-centred design, engineering and education. As an educator in interdisciplinary education Matt works with international students to solve global problems and has a passion for engaging a wide range of viewpoints and expertise to solve problems. Matt has expertise in delivering innovative education through the use of online learning platforms to engage students in interactive and enriching engineering and design principles.
Prior to TEDI-London Matt completed a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Nottingham with experience mentoring final year undergraduate students on design challenges.

Jo is a Customer Experience Manager and AI Chatbot Product Owner at Eviden. Jo has over 10 years’ experience delivering digital projects, originally working as a project manager before transitioning to a role where she could get to the heart of user problems and help shape solutions to solve them. Outside of work Jo co-runs ‘The Savvy Scientist’ website, supporting current and prospective PhD students. She is passionate about continuous development and always excited to learn more about how AI can streamline user experiences.

Costas Andriopoulos is a Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Bayes Business School, City, University of London, Director of Bayes X (Centre for Innovation and Disruption) and a member of the investment committee of the Bayes Entrepreneurship Fund. He founded Avyssos Advisors, consulting clients on disruptive innovation and digital transformation. He also leads executive education programmes for business executives on disruptive innovation and entrepreneurial thinking. His first commercial book, Purposeful Curiosity (Yellow Kite, 2023), offers a masterclass in the power of purposeful curiosity to succeed and lead a fulfilled life. ‘This book is dotted with ‘Try This’ tips and takeaways and full of practical advice. An engaging, readable life manual.’ The Financial Times.

Carmen is a VC turned Angel at Cocoa – an angel fund backed by tech founders, Cocoa invests $250-$500k checks into European pre-seed/seed companies and supports founders as their in-house VC. More on Cocoa here.
Previously she was a Partner at Series A fund Blossom and a very active angel, having done 20+ angel investments – Carmen was the first investor in Hopin – she’s credited with having syndicated 100% of the pre-seed round in summer 2019.
At Cocoa, Carmen looks for Killers with a Heart who are obsessed with building businesses with insane customer love, like eventstore.com, foresightdatamachines.com, gladia.io and tilebox.com.
Pre-investing, Carmen started her career in politics.

Emeli Dral is a Co-founder and CTO at Evidently AI, a startup developing open-source tools to evaluate, test, and monitor the performance of machine learning models.

Earlier, she co-founded an industrial AI startup and served as the Chief Data Scientist at Yandex Data Factory. She led over 50 applied ML projects for various industries – from banking to manufacturing. Emeli is a data science lecturer at Harbour.Space University, and a co-author of the Machine Learning and Data Analysis curriculum at Coursera with over 100,000 students.

Ellie Bates is a Learning Technologist at TEDI-London and Co-Director at EL Learning Design, which specialises in e-learning development for healthcare. With a background in Fine Art and five years of experience as a design technology teacher, she transitioned to higher education, supporting academics in developing online learning and blended learning. In 2022, she co-launched EL Learning Design and has since developed innovative learning materials, including games, podcasts, and interactive content, for institutions such as the NHS. Ellie is particularly passionate about exploring how AI can revolutionise lifelong learning and investigating its pedagogical applications.

Sukirti is an associate technology consultant and registered scrum master at IBM.

Aaliya is a Software Engineer at the fintech Wise, where she focuses specifically on onboarding and fraud for emerging markets. Before this, she was a software engineer at an AI electronics company and worked in EdTech companies for 4 years in various operational roles e.g. Chief of Staff. She thinks a lot about how people can futureproof themselves in an ever-changing market, and how we can make AI more robust and understandable as it starts becoming more integrated into our every day lives.

Former Managing Director in Accenture’s Security Practice. I’ve worked on solving technology problems for organisations for 20 years across logistics, energy, telecoms in financial services. I’ve advised some of the leading organisations in their industry on handling new technology, transformation and managing change. During this time I’ve build teams across 3 continents and represented the UK at the international stage. I’m also advising UK’s trade relations with the outside world. I believe that GenAI, completely changes the dynamics to make information more easily accessible just as the internet did in the 1990’s. If we can make a positive use of this type of technology in the future, our ability to improve quality of education across the world and for those with disability.

With nearly two decades of experience in AI and technology, I’ve navigated the realms of corporate responsibility, ethical AI in healthcare and energy, and digital inclusivity. My journey spans from leading initiatives at Microsoft as Director of Citizenship & Diversity, to pioneering Responsible Business Intelligence™ as Co-Founder of Polecat, delivering insights across global sectors. Being part of 42 London, I’m at the forefront of democratizing tech education in the Gen AI era, focusing on inclusive and diverse technological advancement. Recognized for integrating AI with strategic business goals, I’m dedicated to mentoring future innovators in creating equitable, AI-driven solutions.

Meet Yassir, a tech professional excelling as a Software Engineer & IT Lead at 42 London. In this role, he oversees technical infrastructure, develops educational tools, and collaborates globally, contributing to the success of 42 London.

Beyond this, he is an experienced Tech Entrepreneur and Product Marketing Manager, showcasing versatility and impactful contributions in different tech areas, with a track record of leading SaaS sales growth, implementing data-driven strategies, and handling various technical projects.

Bruno is a dad and also the Head of Information Security Engineering for the British Broadcasting Corporation (https://bbc.co.uk). He likes technology and has been having fun with technology since around 1986. He is an avid proponent of experiential learning, embracing an holistic approach to education and personal development. He has working experience ranging from start-up environments to large multi-national organisations, and is still fascinated by the similarities between them. This may have been written by AI.

Daria has been working with automation & AI for almost a decade, from management consulting and R&D, through industrial applications to AI in education. She is a co-founder of an industrial company Mainware, a former CEO & Board member of 42 Prague, a lecturer on AI in Business Processes for the European School of Business and Management, and a proud mom & columnist on data-driven parenting. Daria was featured in Forbes 30 under 30 in 2023. She leads the AI efforts of 42 London, and works on integrating AI tools into primary education STEM programmes at AI EduLab.

Tomas Studenik is the CEO of innovation consultancy Insane Business Ideas (www.inbui.com) based in Prague. He was named IT Personality of the Year 2020 by Computer World magazine. Tomas is the founder of Caelestinus health tech incubator (www.caelestinus.tech) and is behind the world’s first theater play written by artificial intelligence and performed by humans in 2021 (www.theaitre.com). Tomas leads a team of generative artificial intelligence consultants, AInautes (www.ainautes.com), who help implement AI in private companies as well as public organisations across Europe.

Pavol, a developer and tech enthusiast who is passionate about exploring cutting–edge tools and technologies. As a co–founder of H-edu and Collboard, I’m invested in using digital innovation to transform education. I’ve developed several citizen science projects, including the first mobile app for birdwatchers in the Czech Republic, and spoken at tech and startup conferences on topics such as VR, AR and AI. I also run Czech.events, a platform that helps people find and attend technology and innovation events. My talent for identifying growth opportunities and mentoring startups has led me to win several innovation competitions. I’m committed to inspiring others and believe that technology can help solve the world’s problems

Šimon, a practicing architect with a background in scripting and using artificial intelligence in workflow and architectural design. Co-founder of svetlodat.eu and creator of the public service PrahaBot, which provides an AI-enabled knowledgebase of city documents, manuals, methodologies and regulations in the form of an informed conversational AI assistant.