Martin Sykora

Dr. Martin Sykora is a Senior Lecturer (Reader equivalent) in Information Management at Loughborough Business School, where he serves as Director of Research and Innovation Funding and Head of the Information Management Group. His interdisciplinary research bridges computational social media analysis, sentiment detection, and public health through advanced applications of machine learning, natural language processing, and semantic modeling.

• PhD in Computer Science (Loughborough University, 2012)
• Former Research Associate at Loughborough and University of Leicester
• Commercial Data Science experience in finance and analytics

Research focuses on three areas: digital humanitarianism for public health/digital epidemiology, misinformation impact on society, and organizational social media analytics for harmful behavior detection. His work integrates qualitative approaches with computational methods, emphasizing responsible AI and ethical data practices.

Recent publications analyze smart city resilience, brand responses to geopolitical crises, and bot behavior in pandemic communication. Methodologically, he develops ontologies, spatial-temporal models, and emotion-aware systems validated through case studies like Superstorm Sandy recovery and UK General Election analysis.

• Over £715,000 in research funding from EU Horizon 2020, SSHRC, Innovate UK, Swiss School of Public Health, and UKRI
• Active peer reviewer for journals: Social Science & Medicine, PLOS ONE, Semantic Web Journal
• Academic Editor at PLOS ONE
• Supervised 8 PhD students to completion

Teaching spans web analytics, information systems development, business models, and machine learning, with a focus on ethical data practices. His work has received international media attention from CNN, BBC, and Daily Mail.