Nic is the Director of UK’s National Innovation Centre for Ageing (NICA) a world-leading organisation, created with a £40 million investment from UK Government and Newcastle University. The Centre aims to bring together world-leading innovation experts, scientists, industry and the public, to develop, test and bring to market products and services which enhance and improve all aspects of life for our ageing societies.
Before, he was research manager and AI Ethics lead at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, a $250 million academic-industry partnership for the responsible advancement of artificial intelligence.
Trained in social studies and business communication, Nic developed a deep expertise in leading heterogeneous teams and connecting dots across disciplines to bridge academic and industrial research with real-world applications to deliver return-on-community and return-on-business with a specific focus on longevity and the coming effects and opportunities of the demographic revolution.
Nic holds a decade of experience in research on supporting older adults’ autonomy and independence, leading a global team to develop Human Activity Recognition techniques dedicated to older adults based on AI applied to IoT data.
Nic is an author, teacher, applied research scientist and his main areas of research are: Loneliness as an accelerator of physical and cognitive diseases, ageism, aging and economic factors, aging women and workplace, ethics and AI. The work of his teams has been awarded two times with the ComputerHonors Award, at the United Nations for Aging Initiative and received the Disability Matters – Market Place Award.
Nic is the author of five books and member of several boards including the Scientific Advisory Committee at McMaster Institute for Research on Aging (MIRA), GIMI (Global Management Innovation Institute) and the Scientific Board of Political Sciences and International Relations at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan.
