Nicola Palmarini

I am 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, to help create a world in which we all live better, for longer. 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, I was research manager at IBM Research where I have been the Program Manager and Ethics AI lead of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, a $250 million academic industry partnership for the responsible advancement of artificial intelligence.

I am an author, teacher, applied research scientist and I'm interested in understanding how technologies and AI can help mitigate factors as loneliness and isolation, fight ageism (here’s my talk at TEDx) and support life of older adults while preserving independence and dignity in their life-stages progression. I am also interest in the dynamics about women, technology and the workplace serving as founding board member of amazing.community.

In my IBM career, I served as Global Manager of Ai for Healthy Aging in Cambridge; Director of Human Centric Solution Center in Paris; Head of Corporate Brand System and Social media and head of Customer Experience, Brand and Usability both in IBM Italy, Milano.
Prior to joining IBM, I was creative director at McCann-Erikson Interactive and served ad creative director in several advertising agencies.

In my other explorations through innovative digital + human landscapes of interaction I was Head of Digital at Tinaba and co-founder of Talent Garden (TAG) Innovation School the largest European co-working and innovation hub. It runs 5 Full time Masters, 10 Masterclasses, has trained more than 3,500 professionals, and involved 80 companies in training programs.