Network Members

Research Area: forced displacement, post‐traumatic stress disorder, meta-analysis

Dr. Ahlke Kip is a clinical psychologist with a research focus on understanding and mitigating the psychological impacts of different global challenges. Her primary areas of interest include the mental health consequences of war and forced displacement, the psychological impacts of natural disasters and the broader implications of climate change on the epidemiology of mental disorders in general as well as the etiology and treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in particular. Her research methodology includes systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and umbrella reviews, as well as randomized controlled trials. She has coordinated multi-center trials on new treatment approaches for refugees in Germany and is currently funded by the German Research Foundation to investigate risk factors for mental disorders after exposure to natural hazards.
Her international experience includes visiting scholar positions at the University of New South Wales (Australia; predictors of bushfire preparedness), the MSF Operational Center Amsterdam (Netherlands, predictors of mental health trajectories in international humanitarian aid workers), and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health and Service Evaluation at the Università di Verona (Italy; efficacy of psychological treatments for refugees).

Research Area: resilience research, mental health, psychotherapy

Prof. Andrea Chmitorz has been a professor of health sciences at Esslingen University of Applied Sciences since 2019 and a psychological psychotherapist (behavioral therapy).

Her research focuses on the experience of stress, psychological resilience, and mental health, the development and validation of assessment instruments in these areas, and the promotion of psychological resilience factors. She has proven expertise in resilience research, particularly in intervention and evaluation research, as well as in everyday assessment using ecological momentary assessment. Prof. Chmitorz published over 30 research articles and contributed to several books. She is a member of the Baden-Württemberg State Chamber of Psychotherapists, the International Resilience Alliance (Intresa), the German Society for Public Health (DGPH) and the German Society for Psychology (DGP).
 

Research Area: acceptance of renewable energies, environmental stress impact

Gundula Hübner is Professor for Social Psychology at the MSH Medical School Hamburg. Additionally, at the Institute of Psychology, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, she leads the research group of health and environmental psychology. Gundula Hübner and her research team have experience with a broad range of topics concerning the social acceptance of renewable energies and transmission lines as well as the stress impact of wind turbines on residents. She is working in international, inter- and transdisciplinary research teams in several projects on the social acceptance of on- and offshore wind energy. Supporting the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, she is member of the International Energy Agency Task 62 „Social Science to Support Wind Energy Planning and Participation“ and member of various advisory boards and boards of trustees.

Research Area: protective factors for mental health and learning, effective (virtual) learning environments

Professor Anett Wolgast specialises in Educational Psychology, Statistics, and Research Methods at FHM. Her research explores protective factors for mental health and learning, alongside the development of effective (virtual) learning environments within vocational and higher education. She has led two EU-funded projects focused on vocational training through virtual tools and currently heads a project aimed at enhancing municipal and citizen preparedness for climate change-related challenges. In addition, she contributes to an EU-funded initiative supporting adults on the autism spectrum in securing and sustaining employment within the primary labour market. She has served as a co-principal investigator on other funded research projects.

Her academic experience includes serving as Professor ad interim and Chair of Educational Psychology at Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), as well as holding visiting scholar positions at the University of Southern California (USA), Maynooth University (Ireland), and the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education (Germany). 

Professor Wolgast has been actively involved in academic self-governance and research system activities, including conference organisation, committee service, and doctoral mentoring. She currently mentors doctoral researchers through Mentoring Hessen at Goethe University Frankfurt. She also serves as Associate Editor for journals, including the European Journal of Teacher Education, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, BMC Psychology, and School Mental Health.

Research Area: microsystems engineering, microsensors and actuator technologies

Ha-Duong Ngo was born in Vietnam, 1971. He studied in Vietnam, Kiev, Ucraina (former UdSSR) and Chemnitz, Germany. He received the German Diploma in 1998 from Technical University Chemnitz. He joined MAT (Microsensors and Actuators Technology Center at Technical University Berlin) in 1998 and worked in several projects on MEMS sensors and Actuators. From 2004- 2006 he was with Schott AG, where his R&D work focused on CMOS image sensors and Wafer Level Packaging Technologies for this kind of sensors. He received PhD on MOEMS from Technical University Berlin in 2006. By the end of 2006 he joined the Electrical Faculty and the Research Center for Microperipheric Technologies at Technical University Berlin as Associated Professor. He was head of Microsensors and Actuator Technology Center at Technical University Berlin and conducted several MEMS courses at Technical University Berlin until 2012. From 2012-April 2022 he was Group Leader Microsensors technology at Fraunhofer Institute IZM Berlin. From 2012 – he is Full Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Berlin and docent at Technical University Berlin. 

His present research interests include silicon, SOI and silicon carbide technologies, 2D nano materials, microsensors and actuators, AeroMEMS, Biosensors, quantum sensors as well as micromachining.

Research Area: innovation management in the healthcare sector, e-health solutions

Research Area: addiction, behaviour change, and self-regulation

Adrian Parke is an Associate Professor in Psychology within the School of Education and Social Sciences at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS), specialising in behavioural transformation research related to health and psychological wellbeing.  At UWS, Adrian leads the Applied Psychology Research Group, where the team is focussed on leveraging psychological theory and research designs to address real world problems, at both local and national levels.  Before this, Adrian led the Forensic and Clinical Research Group within the Division of Psychology at the University of Lincoln, where he was employed between 2006 and 2019.

His work applies both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate the psychological and structural determinants of behaviour change; primarily focussed on harm-minimisation strategies, and informing regulatory policy, within the field of gambling disorder.  Dr Parke’s research portfolio spans experimental studies, behavioural sequence analysis, psychometric scale development, and virtual reality applications for understanding user experience. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and authored policy reports adopted by industry and regulatory bodies. His expertise has contributed directly to changes in safer gambling practices, including the design of player protection tools and self-exclusion schemes.

Research Area: health development, ageing, and poverty

Dr Guntupalli, Senior Lecturer in Global Health at the University of Aberdeen, has been researching health inequalities for the past 23 years. Using interdisciplinary methods, her work experience spanned across different parts of the world including International Institute for Population Sciences (an autonomous organisation of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India), two of the world’s oldest Universities (University of Tübingen, Germany and University of Aberdeen, Scotland), top 100 Universities (University of Southampton, UK) and the leading distance learning higher education globally (The Open University, UK). As an interdisciplinary academic trained in economics, population sciences, and anthropology, she has developed and led courses on global public health and global development while researching health inequalities across the life course. Her recent focus has been on excess mortality, old age, as well as the implications of food and fuel poverty on health in Europe.

Her global work also focuses on addressing inequalities in non-communicable diseases in Uganda, Malawi, and India. Additionally, she has explored the challenges of gender inequalities and child stunting in low- and middle-income countries. As a programme and course lead, she has mentored hundreds of students from various disciplines worldwide. She has successfully supervised PhD and MSc dissertation students from different parts of the world. Currently, she is a co-editor of the Journal of Global Ageing and Frontiers in Public Health.

She is also a founding member and a current lead of the Special Interest Group on Ageing in Asia, Africa and Latin America of the British Society of Gerontology, an External Examiner of MSc Global Policy for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and an Economic and Social Research Council UK Peer Review College member. Global CARE Panel member of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, as well as the Vice President of the Executive Board of the International Institute for Population Sciences Alumni Association.

Research Area: financial inclusion and income inequality, business analytics, applied mathematics, climate vulnerability and corporate finance

Gerhard Kling is a Chair in Finance at the University of Aberdeen with 20 years of experience in higher education, having previously held positions at SOAS, the University of Southampton, UWE, and Utrecht University. As a Practice Specialist in Corporate Finance at McKinsey & Company, Prof Kling primarily focused on firm valuation and mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Since January 2022, he has served as the Director and Secretary of YUNIKARN LTD, an educational content creation and consulting firm. The company’s YouTube channel, YUNIKARN, offers free courses in data science using Python and Stata.

Prof Kling has provided consulting services for notable organizations, including McKinsey & Company (2007–2010), HMRC (2012–2015), Industrial Bank (China) (2013), Brunello Cucinelli (2018), China State Shipbuilding Corporation (2019), the Third Bureau of Supervision of SASAC (2019), and the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) (2021–2022).

With a background in economics (PhD, BSc/MSc), mathematics (BSc/MSc), and programming (Python, C/C++, MATLAB, Stata, etc.), Prof Kling specializes in machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and their applications in FinTech. He has acted as principal or co-investigator on several large-scale projects, including initiatives in FinTech (ESRC-NSFC: GBP 0.5 million), IoT (FP7: EUR 2.6 million), and satellite technology (FP6: EUR 11.9 million).

Research Area: social intelligence and trust in assistive robotics, human-robot interaction

Dr. Marta Romeo is an Assistant Professor and Bicentennial Research Leader in Human-Robot Interaction at the Computer Science department in the School of MACS (Mathematical and Computer Sciences) at Heriot-Watt University. She is affiliated with the National Robotarium and she co-leads the “Safe and Secure AI for Robotics Theme”. She earned her PhD from the University of Manchester on human-robot interaction and deep learning for companionship in elderly care, working on the H2020 Project MoveCare. She then stayed at the University of Manchester as a postdoc working for the UKRI Node on Trust, investigating how trust in human-robot interactions is built, maintained and recovered when lost. After moving to Heriot-Watt she became a Co-I on the Node until the end of the project. She is the PI of the TAS-GAIL project project, looking at developing a robotic active listener, and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Spring Joint project “Are nurses ready for robots? Understanding the technological literacy needs of nursing students”. Her research focuses on developing socially intelligent robots, able to adapt to their users with the aim to increase safety, acceptability and usability. She is interested in human-robot interaction, failures and repairs in interactions between humans and robots, and in the multidisciplinary work needed to discuss robotics as a socio-technical problem.

Research Area: wireless communications, machine learning, internet of things, aerial networks

Prof. Muhammad Zeeshan Shakir is a Professor of Wireless Communication and the Director of Digital Connectivity and Innovation Centre at the University of the West of Scotland. With over 20 years of experience, he has secured nearly £9 million in research funding from organizations including Innovate UK, the ERASMUS program, the UK Government, Qatar National Research Fund, the British Council, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Scottish Government. His research spans advanced digital technologies, focusing on 5G/6G networks, IoT, and AI. Prof. Shakir has published over 200 research articles, contributed to ten books, and received multiple awards, including Innovate UK's Award of Excellence (2023, 2018), the CEED award 2025, the Herald Higher Education Award (2023), and the IEEE Fred W. Ellersick Award (2021). He actively contributes to IEEE events such as Globecom and ICC and serves as executive chair for IEEE ICC 2026 in Glasgow. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Young Academy of Scotland, highlighting his commitment to both academia and technology.

Research Area: artificial intelligence, quality of experience of 2D/3D video, affective computing

Prof. Naem Ramzan is a Full Professor of AI and Computer Engineering at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) and Director of the Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Communication and Network (AVCN) institute and Chair of Affective and Human Computing for Smart Environment (AHCSE) Research Group. 

He is a Fellow of Royal Society of Edinburgh, senior member of the IEEE, Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy (SHEA), co-chair of MPEG HEVC verification (AHG5) group and a voting member of the British Standard Institution (BSI). In addition, he holds key roles in the Video Quality Expert Group (VQEG) such as Co-chair of the Ultra High Definition (UltraHD) group; Co-chair of the Visually Lossless Quality Analysis (VLQA) group; and Co-chair of the Psycho-Physiological Quality Assessment (PsyPhyQA).

With over two and half decades of international academic, research labs and industry experience, his high-quality interdisciplinary research and teaching mainly focuses on Generative AI and AI/machine learning, multimedia search and retrieval, video quality evaluation, brain-inspired multi-modal cognitive technology, multi-modal human-computer interfaces, big data analytics, affective computing, IoT/smart environments, and Digital Health/connected Health. 

Professor Ramzan has led an international patent and authored/co-authored more than 250 publications including over 125 papers in peer-reviewed journals.