Professor Hope began his academic studies at the University of Oxford, reading, thinking and writing about the brain / mind. To try to tackle these issues at a more practical level, he then moved to the University of Sussex to study a sub-field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that emphasizes the dynamics of sensorimotor integration in embodied agents. Aiming to use these techniques at a more ambitious scale, he took a staff scientist job at the UK’s Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), developing new AI technology for military applications. And then deciding he needed to better understand the brain, he took up a Marie Curie Early Stage fellowship to study the format of neural semantic representations of number, at the University of Padova (Italy), with stints in Aachen (Germany), and Paris (France).
On returning to the UK, Professor Hope worked at Imperial College London, studying ‘clinician resistance’ to the introduction of new AI technology in medicine. He then moved to University College London, to use brain imaging and formal / computational methods to study the neurobiology of language in health and disease. Much of his current research involves developing new applications of machine learning for neurology, and work aiming to elucidate the mechanisms that drive language in the brain. Professor Hope joined John Cabot University in 2022 as a Visiting Professor, and in 2023 as an Associate Professor.
Beyond his work in academia and research, he has been a tech entrepreneur and a management consultant, and he still takes occasional work as a technical consultant on AI projects. He's also a trained barrister: a lawyer specializing in oral advocacy in the courts of England and Wales.
