Alex Rast

Dr Alex Rast is a Senior Lecturer in Computing within the School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics at Oxford Brookes University, where he also serves as Third-Year Tutor for all computing programmes. His career spans academic posts at the Universities of Manchester and Southampton and industry experience at wireless start-up Inficom, Inc.

Education & Career Path

• A-level studies sparked lifelong interest in neural networks and neuromorphic hardware.
• Post-doctoral research at University of Manchester on cognitive robotics and neuromorphic chips.
• Research fellow at University of Southampton on large-scale parallel event-driven systems.
• Industry stint at Inficom working on control processors and modulation theory.
• Joined Oxford Brookes University, rising to Senior Lecturer while leading multiple research initiatives.

Research Focus

Dr Rast’s research integrates event-driven vision sensors with neuromorphic cognitive processors to create fully integrated autonomous neurorobotic systems capable of operating in unstructured natural environments. Core themes include:

• Real-time perception and SLAM for autonomous vehicles and racing robots.
• Large-scale spiking neural network models for learning and decision-making.
• Probabilistic temporal reasoning under uncertainty.
• Ethical decision-making and reinforcement learning for responsible AI agents.
• Novel applications such as neural models for fine-flavour cacao and chocolate assessment.

Funding & Projects

• Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with Supponor on advanced scene infilling systems.
• CLAIMOR (Co-I; British Academy, Apr–Nov 2025) developing comprehensive large AI models for mobile robotics.
• Active consultancy to the Oxford Brookes Racing (OBR) Autonomous racing team on perception and SLAM.

Research Groups & Labs

• Visual Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (VAIL)
• Autonomous Driving and Intelligent Transport (ADIT) group
• Machine Learning and Robotics Group (MLR)
• Artificial Intelligence, Data Analysis and Systems (AIDAS) Institute
• Institute for Ethical AI collaboration on ethical agents

Teaching & Supervision

Dr Rast is Third-Year Tutor for all computing programmes and teaches core AI and robotics modules: Artificial Intelligence (BSc, MSci, MSc), Cognitive Robotics, Autonomous Intelligent Systems, and Artificial Intelligence Systems Engineering. He supervises final-year projects and postgraduate research students in neuromorphic computing and autonomous systems.