Varuna De Silva is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies at Loughborough University. He currently acts as the Thematic Research Lead for the UK Parliament. He has a PhD in digital signal processing from University of Surrey. Prior to joining academia, he worked as a senior research engineer in the consumer electronics industry, and the telecommunications industry. As a post-doctoral researcher, he contributed to two major EU funded projects. He is the recipient of two major research awards from EPSRC/UKRI for next generation AI development for Sports Analytics and Autonomous Drone Systems design. He has worked closely with Chelsea F.C. Academy, Dallas Mavericks NBA team, and Toyota manufacturing-UK to translate his research to real world applications. His current work on trustworthy autonomous systems, in collaboration with defence stakeholders of the UK, seeks to triage wounded soldiers in battlefields through drones. Varuna directs the machine intelligence lab at Loughborough University London, with a vision to scale state-of-the-art AI algorithms to real world, sustainable, trustworthy, engineering systems. He is the founder and director of a successful Masters in AI and Data analytics programme at Loughborough University.