Oxford Engineering researcher honoured with Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowship

The Research Fellowships programme is designed to support outstanding early-career researchers like Christian, providing them with the freedom to focus on innovative engineering solutions to pressing societal challenges. These fellowships not only provide significant financial support but also create opportunities for researchers to establish a robust track record in their respective fields.

By combining theory and practical implementation, I aim to address fundamental scientific questions while tackling related engineering challenges of great significance to protect media integrity, cyber-physical systems, and critical infrastructure from novel, generative AI-driven threats.

Dr Christian Schroeder de Witt is Principal Investigator of the Oxford Witt Lab for Trust in AI (OWL), based within the Department of Engineering Science. His research focuses on the assurance and security of advanced multi-agent AI systems, developing rigorous, information-theoretically grounded methods to detect and mitigate risks such as disinformation, out-of-context misinformation, AI-driven cyber attacks, and concealed content (steganography). By anticipating multi-agent and system-level threats, his work aims to strengthen digital trust and enable the safe, responsible adoption of AI across society. 

Dr Schroeder de Witt said: ‘I’m deeply honoured to receive the Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship. This support allows me to build a truly interdisciplinary programme - bridging mathematics, computer science, psychology, cybersecurity, and policy - so we can forecast, characterise, and pre-empt AI-driven threats before they escalate. We will develop explainable, scalable tools and evaluations that complement content provenance standards.’

During the Fellowship, Dr Schroeder de Witt will collaborate with world-leading partners, including Adobe, Armasuisse Science+Technology, and the BBC and work closely with colleagues across Engineering Science and the wider University to accelerate real-world solutions for securing AI-enabled systems and safeguarding public discourse, and strengthening the resilience of financial services against fraud.