SAINTS shortlisted for Times Higher Education EDI Award 2026

Posted on Thursday 10 September 2026

SAINTS earned national recognition for its outstanding contribution to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

The centre treats representation as an essential technical requirement to prevent artificial intelligence from inheriting social blind spots. By using anonymised recruitment and removing some of the structural barriers that are unhelpful to diversity, SAINTS achieved 64% female offers in 2024/25 alongside increased recruitment from non-academic industry backgrounds.

The work built on an EDI strategy which was embedded early on in SAINTS' creation, and shows improvement on the first cohort recruited in 23/24 in which 45% of places offered were to female applicants, already bucking sector trends. 

Professor Ibrahim Habli, Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Safe AI Systems, said: “When the teams designing technology lack diversity, systems inherit blind spots that create real safety risks for the public. By changing how we recruit, our researchers are creating the robust safety standards needed to build genuine public trust.”

Winners will be announced in Birmingham on Thursday 26 November.

Read Professor Habli’s blog on ‘Why safe AI needs diversity’.