Edit your staff profile

Your staff profile is made up of information taken from systems including Pure and Subscribe.  This page explains how to update each section of your profile.

Dr Rafael Mestre

 PhD, MSc, BSc
Lecturer

Research interests

  • Responsible Research and Innovation of emergent technologies
  • Multimodal machine learning and Natural Language Processing
  • Computational social science

More research

Accepting applications from PhD students.

Connect with Rafael

Profile photo 
Upload your profile photo in Subscribe (opens in a new tab). Your profile photo in Pure is not linked to your public staff profile. Choose a clear, recent headshot where you are easily recognisable. Your image should be at least 340 by 395 pixels. 

Name 
To change your name or prefix title contact Ask HR (opens in new tab)  If you want to update an academic title you'll need to provide evidence e.g. a PhD certificate. The way your name is displayed is automatic and cannot be changed. You can also update your post-nominal letters in Subscribe (opens in a new tab).

Job title 
Raise a request through ServiceNow (opens in a new tab) to change your job title (40 characters maximum) unless you're on the ERE career pathway. If you're on the ERE path you can not change your main job title, but you can request other minor updates through Ask HR (opens in new tab). If you have more than one post only your main job title will display here, but you can add further posts or roles in other sections of your profile.

Research interests (for researchers only) 
Add up to 5 research interests. The first 3 will appear in your staff profile next to your name. The full list will appear on your research page. Keep these brief and focus on the keywords people may use when searching for your work. Use a different line for each one.

In Pure (opens in a new tab), select ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading 'Curriculum and research description', select 'Add profile information'. In the dropdown menu, select 'Research interests: use separate lines'.

Contact details 
Add or update your email address, telephone number and postal address in Subscribe (opens in a new tab). Use your University email address for your primary email. 

You can link to your Google Scholar, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts through Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’.  In the 'Links' section, use the 'Add link' button. 

ORCID ID 
Create or connect your ORCID ID in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’ and then 'Create or Connect your ORCID ID'.

Accepting PhD applicants (for researchers only) 
Choose to show whether you’re currently accepting PhD applicants or not in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’. In the 'Portal details' section, select 'Yes' or 'No' to indicate your choice. 

About

Dr Mestre joined the University of Southampton in 2021 and is currently a Lecturer at the School of Electronics and Computer Science of the University of Southampton and a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute. He's the PI of the ESRC New Investigator award "Biohybrid Futures: A framework for research governance and application of bio-hybrid robotics", where he researches social, ethical and policy implications of emergent technologies like biohybrid robotics using mixed research methods. He's also the PI of the RAI UK International Partnership grant "RAI4MH: Exploring Fairness and Bias of Multimodal Natural Language Processing for Mental Health" in collaboration with the Institute for Experiential AI @ Northeastern University (US) and PI of the upcoming £1.2M UKRI Cross-Research Council grant SOUNDSCALE, investigating the responsible development of distributed fibre optic sensing for smart cities through inter- and transdisciplinary research with the physical, computer and social sciences, arts and humanities, and engagement with citizens, policymakers, nonprofits and industry.

His research is interdisciplinary and focuses on the responsible development and socio-technical evaluation of emerging technologies, at the interface of disciplines like computer science, science and technology studies and political science. Much of his research efforts are focused on computational social science (and argumentation mining in particular) using multimodal machine learning methods (text-as-data, image-as-data, audio-as-data). He also studies digital tools for deliberation applied to democratic innovations; the ethics, social implications and governance of emergent technologies like natural language processing (NLP) and bio-hybrid robots; and the application of machine learning in digital humanities. He is co-director of the Centre for Democratic Futures (CDF), Ethics & Governance lead at the Centre for Robotics, Associate at the Digital Humanities (DH) hub of the University and a member of the Institute for Life Sciences (IfLS).

Prior to this, he was a New Frontiers Fellow in Machine Learning at the School of Electronics and Computer Science and before that a postdoctoral Research Fellow in the 'Rebooting Democracy' project at the Politics and International Relations Department. In the past, during his PhD defended in November 2020, he researched at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) in the development of bio-hybrid robotics and nanorobotics, at the interface of fields like tissue engineering, biomedicine, material science, computer science, physics, 3D-bioprinting, robotics and computer vision. 

You can update this in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading and then ‘Curriculum and research description’, select ‘Add profile information’. In the dropdown menu, select - ‘About’.

Write about yourself in the third person. Aim for 100 to 150 words covering the main points about who you are and what you currently do. Clear, simple language is best. You can include specialist or technical terms.

You’ll be able to add details about your research, publications, career and academic history to other sections of your staff profile.