Dr Laura Gilbert

Dr. Laura Gilbert is the Head of the AI for Government Program at the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford. As part of this role she works one day a week on secondment to the Tony Blair Institute, and one day on secondment to the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation as an expert advisor in AI.  

From September 2020 to January 2025, Laura worked in 10 Downing Street as the founding director of 10DS, the data science and analytics team. She also created and directed the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI) in 2023 until her exit, and held other roles including Chief Analyst for the Cabinet Office and directorship of other teams including the Evaluation Taskforce and a team in national security. These high performance teams successfully provided ground-breaking, fast-paced modelling and analysis to support policy making and delivery, and delivered expert data and AI solutions into public services. Laura also created and spearheads a broader program of radical transformation, innovation, digitisation and radical upskilling in central government called Evidence House, that delivered around 1500 hours of free, in person technical training to civil servants and spun out multiple AI solutions to public service delivery problems. 

Laura holds a doctorate in Particle Physics and Computing from the University of Oxford, undergraduate degrees from the University of Cambridge, is a Visiting Professor at LSE, and holds fellowships of the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Analytics. She previously worked in defence intelligence, quantitative finance, and for nearly a decade was CTO of a medical technologies company, Rescon, bringing it from start-up to SMT to acquisition before exiting and joining government in 2020. She is fluent in seven programming languages, and is named on four patents, including lead inventor on two data security patents.