Profile

Dr Avon Huxor

Associate Lecturer

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Dr. Avon Huxor

I am an Associate Lecturer working on the MSc Data Science (Professional).

Background

My background is diverse. After a degree in Architecture and Planning, I obtained an MA(RCA) from the Royal College of Art in Design Theory, and which led me into the field of Artificial Intelligence. After some years researching AI at ECRC in Munich, I returned to the UK to undertake a PhD in the subject, in which I argued it is better understood as a medium for the communication of knowledge between people.

In 2000, partly as a consequence of the AI winter, I started to re-skill in an old passion of mine - astronomy. After an MSc and PhD in astrophysics from the Univesrity of Hertfordshire I spent many years as a research (observational) astronomer at the Universities of Bristol, Edinbirgh and, latterly, Heidelberg.

In 2015, I moved back to the UK, and into Data Science and Machine Learning, with an MSc in these subjects from the University of Bristol. I remained at Bristol for a few years as a research associate and data scientist working on medical texts, before moving to Exeter in August of 2020.

Details can be found on my ORCID site.

Research Interests

My research continues the themes flund in my prior work. They are:

1. Application of machine learning to astronomical data. Specifically, detecting star clusters in image data, and identifiying rare astrophysical objects (e.g. carbon stars) in large catalogue datasets.
2. Extending the work in my first PhD on the knowledge medium, in which we can usefully reinterpret AI/ML work in terms of a computational surface that allows humans to communicate knowledge to each other.
3. I also have an interest in innovation studies; can we use data to identify possible innovation in science and technology avant la lettre.