Cambridge role in new AI research lab courtesy Canada-UK alliance
The lab, which will be based at Imperial, is designed to pursue world-leading academic research in artificial intelligence focusing on foundational challenges in safety and reliability, advancing frontier AI capabilities, and researching the technology’s broader societal and economic impact.
The lab also has plans to train large-scale foundation models jointly with Thomson Reuters – an opportunity previously limited to only a handful of industrial institutions.
Areas of interest include agentic systems, data-centric machine learning, retrieval and grounding, reasoning and planning, evaluation and safety, and human-in-the-loop workflows that reflect realistic demands on complex intelligent systems. In addition, researchers will study the impact of frontier systems across society, including economic impact, future of work, and access to justice.
Professor Felix Steffek, Professor of Law at University of Cambridge and an Associate Director of the new lab said: “AI has great potential to improve access to justice. However, there are significant challenges that foundational research needs to address in order to make legal AI applications safe and ethically responsible. The Lab will bring together bright minds from multiple disciplines – including law, ethics and AI – to advance the potential and address the risks of legal AI.”
Backed by guaranteed multi-year funding, the lab is planned to host more than a dozen PhD students working alongside Thomson Reuters foundational research scientists and Imperial academics. Researchers will have access to Imperial’s high-performance computing cluster, enabling experiments at meaningful scale and faster translation from research to practice.
The lab will run a joint seminar series, co-supervised research projects, visiting-researcher exchanges, and open publishing of results. The lab will be led by Professor Alessandra Russo (Department of Computing, Imperial College London), Dr Jonathan Richard Schwarz (Head of AI Research, Thomson Reuters, and Visiting Professor at Imperial College London), and Professor Steffek.
Activities will start on formal launch, including recruitment of the initial PhD cohort and scheduling of early seminars.
“We are only beginning to understand the transformative impact this technology will have on all aspects of society” said Dr Jonathan Richard Schwarz, Head of AI Research at Thomson Reuters, who will join Imperial as a Visiting Professor.
“Our vision is a unique research space where foundational algorithms are developed and made available to world experts, advancing the transparency, verifiability and trustworthiness in which these changes are driving impact in the world.”
The partnership brings a dedicated facility in the heart of Imperial’s DeepTech community, together with world-leading PhD supervision, shared compute infrastructure, and an integrated research agenda. The collaboration also creates a direct pipeline for talent development, joint publications, and real-world validation in high-stakes workflows.
Invaluable research opportunities will arise by providing an avenue for access to high-quality data, including Thomson Reuters original content, spanning a wide range of complex knowledge-intensive domains.
“With dedicated space, a focused PhD cohort, and high-quality computing infrastructure and support, our researchers will be empowered to push the boundaries of AI and deliver scientific advances that truly matter,” said Professor Russo.
“Our collaboration with Thomson Reuters anchors that work in real-world use cases, ensuring that breakthroughs translate into meaningful societal benefit. There is huge potential to unlock creative approaches to a wide range of roles and sectors, enabling AI to strengthen society, energise traditional industries, and create new roles and opportunities across the economy.”
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