Dr Laura Gilbert CBE

Dr Laura Gilbert CBE is an independent adviser working to put AI to use in the public interest. She focuses predominantly on the UK public sector, while also working with technology startups and other governments, alongside board roles and public speaking. Her work centres on technology for the public good and using AI to help build the society people want to live in.

Laura is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics School of Public Policy and a Visiting Fellow in AI at Hertford College, Oxford. She advises UK public sector organisations including UKRI, ESRC, TPR, GBRX, Brent Council and OpenUK on the effective use of AI.

From March 2025 to October 2026, Laura was Senior Director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. She led the AI Innovation Lab and worked with governments worldwide to harness AI for more effective public services. From September 2020 to January 2025, she worked in 10 Downing Street as founding director of 10DS, the government’s data science team, and the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI). Her teams delivered rapid, high-impact modelling to support policy decisions while pioneering AI solutions for public services.

Laura was awarded a CBE for Services to Technology and Analysis in the 2024 New Year Honours. She holds a doctorate in particle physics from the University of Oxford and undergraduate degrees from the University of Cambridge. She is a Fellow of both the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Analytics, and is fluent in seven programming languages.

Before entering government, Laura spent a decade as CTO of Rescon, a medical technology company she helped build from startup to acquisition, working across wearable technology, systems architecture and data security. She is named on four patents. Earlier in her career, she worked in quantitative finance and defence intelligence. Outside work, she has represented Great Britain seven times in savate kickboxing.