Professor Kennedy Chinedu Okafor is a UK Exceptional Talent in Digital Systems and Computing, endorsed by the Royal Academy of Engineering. He is a senior member of the IEEE, USA, and holds a PhD in cloud computing and networked robotics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he received the prestigious Vice-Chancellor’s Award as the best-graduating PhD candidate from the Faculty of Engineering in 2017. Kennedy has held several international research appointments. In 2021, he was appointed as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Simon Fraser University, Canada, where he focused on intelligent cyber-physical systems, before joining Imperial College London in 2022 as a postdoctoral fellow. Kennedy has also served as an External Examiner and Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, a role he continues to hold. While working as a Data Scientist at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), he contributed to the UK’s £318 billion Natural Capital (Woodland) Asset Valuation project and related natural capital accounting systems, valued at over £1.7 trillion. His work supported the development of the UK’s long-term environmental asset strategies and digital modelling frameworks. He currently serves as a technology advisor to the UK government, with a focus on emerging digital technologies and the ecosystems of Strategic Market Status (SMS) firms such as Apple, Google, AWS, and Microsoft. Kennedy is a COREN-certified engineer, a Fellow of the African Scientific Institute (USA). He is a Fellow, a member of the Board of Trustees, and Executive Secretary of the Association of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning of Nigeria (AAIMLON). He is the director of the IEEE Skillup Hub project, powered by IEEE Region 8 (Africa, Middle East, and Europe). He is a faculty member with the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Federal University of Allied Health Sciences, Nigeria.
