About

Alex Rutherford is a Senior Data Scientist at OFCOM, the UK communications regulator in London. Alex has more than 15 years experience as a data scientist and applied researcher drawing on a background in computational physics and data science to understand and model human behaviour. This includes decoding the entire history of world constitutions, training a computer to imagine new jobs and injecting bots into decision making groups to find better solutions.

Alex has held positions in the United Nations Secretariat, UNICEF Office of Innovation, Max Planck Institute and MIT. He provides advisory and training services to UN agencies and companies. Alex’s research has been published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences and Nature and has been featured in Nature News, New York Times and The Economist.

Alex has called nine cities home on 3 continents. He can be found on Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn and email.

Short Bio

(2023 - ) Senior Data Scientist, OFCOM

(2019 - 2022) Senior Research Scientist & Principal Investigator, Max Planck Institute for Human Development

(2018 - 2019) Research Scientist, MIT Media Lab (moved with team to Max Planck Institute)

(2017) Public Policy Research Manager, Facebook

(2015 - 2016) Research Scientist, UNICEF Office of Innovation

(2013 - 2015) Data Scientist, UN Global Pulse

(2011 - 2013) Postdoctoral Fellow, Masdar Institute

(2009 - 2011) Postdoctoral Researcher, New England Complex Systems Institute

(2008 - 2009) Standard Arabic Regular Course, Damascus University

(2005 - 2008) PhD Condensed Matter Physics, University College London (thesis)

(2004 - 2005) Various jobs and travels

(2000 - 2004) Masters of Physics, University of Warwick