Press: release: Gresham College announces three professors to join its team ahead of new academic year

• Helen Czerski to be Gresham Frank Jackson Foundation Professor of the Environment 

• Matt Jones to be IT Livery Company Professor of Information Technology  

• Daniel Susskind to be Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business 

Gresham College is London’s oldest Higher Education Institute and is delighted to announce three new professors will be joining its academic team from the autumn. 

The trio will each deliver six lectures across the academic year which starts in September. These are free to attend in person or to watch online. Last year, lectures were viewed more than seven million times, and attendances have reached record levels.  

Being invited to become a Gresham College professor is a prestigious honour. Previous post holders include Sir Christopher Wren, Sir Chris Whitty, and Sir Roger Penrose.

Notes from a Large Planet: a citizen’s guide to the Earth is the theme for Professor Czerski’s environmental lectures. Over the six sessions she will look at all aspects of living on the third rock from the sun.  

Starting with rules that make life on Earth possible and exploring the oceans, air, the polar regions and the land we live on, the lectures will help us understand more about the world around us. 

She is a physicist and oceanographer with a passion for science, sport, books, creativity, hot chocolate and investigating the interesting things in life. 

Away from Gresham College, she is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London and her research focus is the physics of breaking waves and bubbles at the ocean surface. She is also a co-host of the BBC Radio 4 show Rare Earth, and a regular presenter of science programmes on BBC television.  

She says: “I’m excited to join the team at Gresham College because it’s such a great opportunity to show how much science is directly relevant to society, and to help people see the big picture of how planet Earth works.

“I would love people who watch these lectures to come away looking differently at the material world around them; seeing that they are connected to everything else in nature and able to feel they can choose how to be a citizen of this planet.”  

Professor Jones’ theme is AI As Your Overlord: Assimilation, Acceptance or Resistance?  

It starts with the development of a machine powerful enough to defeat a grand master of the game Go, and will explore the problems, pitfalls and potentials that the new technology will bring to our lives. 

His lectures will mix computer science with psychology, sociology and history to provoke and engage audiences with a wide variety of interests. 

“I’m delighted to have been appointed as the Gresham Professor of Information Technology. IT has already had a profound impact on the way we behave,” he says.  

“The new era of AI – the focus of my lectures this year – could usher in a discombobulating time, as we question who we are as humans.  

“Gresham provides a unique – and free – forum for all of us to be involved in understanding and shaping the science of this transformative technology." 

Dr Susskind will focus on the impact of technology, and particularly AI, asking what the future of working environments and education will be. Can machines do more than make medical diagnoses and compose amusing jokes?  

“I'm thrilled to be joining Gresham College. It’s a real privilege to be part of such an important community and to have the opportunity to talk about what I think is one of the great challenges of our time – the impact of AI on work,” he says.  

“We will explore the scale of the challenge we face and, importantly, a sense of how we ought to respond to it.” 

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Notes to Editors

Pictures available on request. 

For more information or to arrange an interview please contact: Phil Creighton press@gresham.ac.uk 

About Gresham College 

Gresham College has been providing free, educational lectures – at university level – since 1597 when Sir Thomas Gresham founded the college to bring Renaissance Learning to Londoners. Our history includes some of the luminaries of the scientific revolution including Robert Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren. 

Today we carry on Sir Thomas's vision.  

Gresham College is a registered charity number 1039962 and relies on donations to help us encourage people's love of learning for many years to come. For more details or to make a gift, visit our website: www.gresham.ac.uk