Darren Cook

Dr Darren Cook is a Research Fellow at The Violence and Society Centre, City St George's, University of London, where he applies Natural Language Processing (NLP) and data science to societal challenges such as domestic violence, law enforcement communication, and healthcare. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Liverpool and has held research roles at Imperial College London and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.

His educational background includes:

• PhD in Electrical Engineering, Electronics, and Computer Science (EEECS), University of Liverpool (2017–2023)
• MRes in Decision-Making Under Risk and Uncertainty, University of Liverpool (2016–2017)
• MSc in Investigative and Forensic Psychology, University of Liverpool (2015–2016)
• BSc (Hons) in Psychology, The Open University (2010–2015)

Dr Cook’s research focuses on Socially-Responsible AI and Human-AI Collaboration. He develops transparent, fair, and accountable AI systems, particularly focusing on mitigating biases in language models. His work aims to enhance human decision-making through AI augmentation, especially in high-stakes environments such as healthcare and emergency response. He has contributed to AI chatbots for chronic disease management and dementia care.

The available publications indicate a strong trend in applying computational methods to social and psychological domains. His work spans protecting children online, supporting asthma patients via conversational agents, and analyzing political discourse through psychological and computational lenses.

He has collaborated extensively with public sector organizations including:

• Metropolitan Police
• Merseyside Police
• London Fire Brigade
• NHS
• Heathrow Airport
• National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO)

As a Research Fellow, Dr Cook has been involved in advising and research projects rather than formal student supervision. His work has been supported by institutions such as the Turing Internship Network and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. He has contributed to large-scale emergency exercise evaluations, including at Heathrow Airport and in London’s ‘Unified Response’ disaster simulation.

He is an active researcher in the fields of NLP and computational social science, with a commitment to ethical AI implementation and societal impact.