Lecture

Abstract I present on BiasScanner, a machine learning model and tool to
classify news bias and propaganda via linguistic signals and a few other
active research projects of my Information Access Research Group (IARG). We
are currently active in the explainable detection and sub-classification of
sentence-level news bias, the generation of human-comprehensible classification
decision explanations in natural language, RAG chatbots that assist with
areas ranging from machine learning project work in a company to students
learning about artificial intelligence, and improving the evaluation protocol
of machine learning models.

About the Speaker

Since 2021, Prof. Jochen L. Leidner, M.A. M.Phil. FRGS has been a Full
Professor for Explainable and Responsible Artificial Intelligence at Coburg
University of Applied Sciences, where he has also been part of the team
that created a new research institute, the Center for Responsible Artificial
Intelligence (CRAI). Dr. Leidner heads the Information Access Research Group
(IARG) there.  He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of
Edinburgh and two Master’s degrees, in computational linguistics, English
& computer science and computer speech, text & Internet technologies from the
University of Erlangen and the University of Cambridge, respectively. He has
authored, co-authored or edited over 100 publications in computer science,
linguistics, geography, finance, pharmacology and actuarial science. He
has received multiple scholarships and awards from the University Oxford,
EPSRC, DAAD, the University of Cambridge, Peterhouse, The Prince’s
European Trust, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Academy of
Engineering. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society for his
contributions to GIS, holds multiple patents, and has received one best
paper award, two “Inventor of the Year” awards, and he was the
recipient of the first ACM SIGIR Doctoral Consortium Award (citation: “for
outstanding technical contributions”, 2004). He is a member of the ACL,
ACM, RGS and SRA-E, and he is a past award chair of the BCS/Microsoft Karen
Spärck Jones award. Besides academic roles and startups, he has served as
software engineer for SAP, as a Director of Research (Corp. R&D) for Reuters
Ltd. (part of the Thomson Reuters Corporation) for a decade. He is also a
co-founder of KnowledgeSpaces, a consultancy.