Danushka Bollegala

Danushka Bollegala is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Liverpool, where he leads both the Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing research groups. He previously held a lectureship at the University of Tokyo (2010-2013) and currently serves as an Amazon Scholar for Amazon Search. His research bridges fundamental AI with applications in healthcare, law, and social sciences.

Research Focus: Professor Bollegala specializes in developing core NLP methodologies including word embedding techniques, semantic similarity measurement, and domain adaptation. His machine learning research explores privacy-preserving AI, unsupervised parsing, and bias mitigation. Recent applications include clinical decision support for polypharmacy management and legal document analysis.

His publications demonstrate strong emphasis on: 1) Advancing evaluation methodologies for generative NLP systems, 2) Developing privacy-aware embedding techniques, and 3) Creating cross-domain NLP applications for healthcare and social good. Research consistently addresses real-world implementation challenges.

Research Leadership:

• Principal Investigator for £6M+ grants including DynAIRx (NIHR: £4.2M) for AI in multi-morbidity management
• KTP grant with Fletchers Solicitors for legal AI systems
• EU-funded WEB-RADR project for pharmacovigilance

Leads 30+ member research group spanning NLP, machine learning, and healthcare AI. Teaches graduate course COMP 527: Data Mining and Visualisation.