Professor Chris Baber PhD FBCS FCIEHF

School of Computer Science
Chair of Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0) 121 414 4778
Email: c.baber@bham.ac.uk

Address: School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Chris Baber is Chair of Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. He joined the University of Birmingham in 1990 and, after working in several Engineering schools, joined the School of Computer Science in 2018. His research concerns human interaction with technology – specifically, in terms of human people form teams with intelligent technology, and in terms of sensor-based human-technology interaction. He has published over 100 papers in international journals, as well as over 400 conference contributions and half a dozen books. His research has been funded by the UK Ministry of Defence, RCUK, European Union and various industries. He has supervised around 30 students to the completion of their PhD.

Qualifications

• PhD Human Factors of Speech Technology in 1990
• BA (Psychology / English) in 1987

Fellowships

Fellow of the British Computer Society
Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors

Biography

Chris graduated from Keele University with a BA (Hons) in Psychology and English Literature. He decided to pursue a PhD and joined Aston University’s Applied Psychology Unit to research speech technology. He joined the University of Birmingham in 1990 to lecture on the MSc Work Design and Ergonomics programme (initially in the School of Production Engineering before it moved to the School of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering). In 2002 he moved to the School of Electronic, Electrical and Computer Engineering, partly to continue his research on wearable computers and partly to deliver courses on the MSc Human-Centred Systems. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer, Reader and Professor before becoming Head of School in 2013. In 2019 he moved to the School of Computer Science, in connection with work on human-machine teaming.

Teaching

Small Embedded Systems (in the School of Engineering)

Evaluation Methods and Statistics

Postgraduate supervision

Chris has supervised around 30 students to completion of their PhDs.

Research

His PhD concerned the application of speech technology (still quite a novel thing back in the late 1980s, where he worked with a Marconi Macrospeak speech recogniser, learning the rudiments of Unix to get the thing working), which was part-sponsored by a National electricity distribution company. So, he spent time visiting power stations and distribution centres to get an idea of how people did their work. During his PhD, he became interested in supporting speech recognition for mobile workers – which resulted in a large laptop, running the speech recogniser, in a rucksack, together with GPS antenna, and a small head-mounted, monocular television display, to read the words that had been recognised. Naturally, this led to working on wearable computers. Since then, he has shifted the sensors from the person onto everyday tools and objects in order to study the development and retention of human skill. Related to the wearable computers work, he developed technology for crime scene examination – which led to work on sense-making (that is, how crime scene examiners interpret a crime scene and select evidence), which led to work with Police and Intelligence analysts. This has led to work on how human decision making is supported by Artificial Intelligence, and to the study of human-machine teams. In all of this work, he combines an interest in studying human behaviour ‘in the field’ with the design and making of gadgets to measure or support activity.

Other activities

• Panel Chair for EPSRC and Member of EPSRC College
• External Examiner for Loughborough University

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Baber, C & Cassenti, DN 2025, 'Comparing Static and Dynamic Decision Tasks Using Pupillometry: Expected Loss is More Important than Defined Reward', Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 1738-1741. https://doi.org/10.1177/10711813251370728

Baber, C, Kandola, P, Apperly, I & McCormick, E 2025, 'Human-centred explanations for artificial intelligence systems', Ergonomics, vol. 68, no. 3, pp. 391-405. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2024.2334427

Read, GJM, McLean, S, Thompson, J, Stanton, NA, Baber, C, Carden, T & Salmon, PM 2024, 'Managing the risks associated with technological disruption in the road transport system: a control structure modelling approach', Ergonomics, vol. 67, no. 4, pp. 498-514. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2023.2226850

Salmon, PM, McLean, S, Carden, T, King, BJ, Thompson, J, Baber, C, Stanton, NA & Read, GJM 2024, 'When tomorrow comes: A prospective risk assessment of a future artificial general intelligence-based uncrewed combat aerial vehicle system', Applied Ergonomics, vol. 117, 104245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2024.104245

McLean, S, King, BJ, Thompson, J, Carden, T, Stanton, NA, Baber, C, Read, GJM & Salmon, PM 2023, 'Forecasting emergent risks in advanced AI systems: an analysis of a future road transport management system', Ergonomics, vol. 66, no. 11, pp. 1750-1767. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2023.2286907

Chapter

Baber, C 2024, Can the things that make us smart outsmart us? in T Wynn, KA Overmann & FL Coolidge (eds), Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology. Oxford Library of Psychology, Oxford University Press, pp. 1235-1245. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192895950.013.53

Comment/debate

Baber, C 2026, 'Ergonomics and human factors history as craft, engineering, and applied science: a response to de Winter and Eisma', Ergonomics, vol. 69, no. 3, pp. 398-400. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2025.2507505

Conference article

Baber, C, Mustafa, R, Leggett, A, Attfield, S, Gibson, WH, Raywood-Burke, G, Roberts, HV & Amey, D 2024, 'Automating the Analysis of Speech Acts in Teams to Understand Distributed Sensemaking', Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, vol. 68, no. 1, pp. 130-136. https://doi.org/10.1177/10711813241264501

Baber, C, Acharya, A, Howes, A, Cassenti, D & Yu, A 2024, 'How can Artificial Intelligence Teammates Know What Humans Want? Using Eye-Tracking Data to Infer Human Preferences in Game-Theoretic Decision Tasks', Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, vol. 68, no. 1, pp. 1542-1548. https://doi.org/10.1177/10711813241266833

Conference contribution

Webb, N, Milivojevic, S, Sobhani, M, Madin, ZR, Ward, JC, Yusuf, S, Baber, C & Hunt, ER 2025, Co-Movement and Trust Development in Human-Robot Teams. in O Palinko, L Bodenhagen, J-J Cabibihan, K Fischer, S Šabanović, K Winkle, L Behera, SS Ge, D Chrysostomou, W Jiang & H He (eds), Social Robotics: 16th International Conference, ICSR + AI 2024, Odense, Denmark, October 23–26, 2024, Proceedings, Part I. 1 edn, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 15561, Springer, pp. 107-120, 16th International Conference on Social Robotics, ICSR + AI 2024, Odense, Denmark, 23/10/24. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-3522-1_11

Yusuf, S, Baber, C & Ofek, E 2025, Handling Uncertainty in UAV Sensor Information using Bayesian Belief Network and Large Language Model. in SY Yurish (ed.), Drones and Unmanned Systems: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Drones and Unmanned Systems (DAUS' 2025) 19-21 February 2025, Granada, Spain. vol. 1, ARC Conference Proceedings, IFSA, pp. 58-61, 1st International Conference on Drones and Unmanned Systems, Granada, Spain, 19/02/25. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.18747.94240

Ani Justus, A & Baber, C 2025, LLMs as Policy-Agnostic Teammates: A Case Study in Human Proxy Design for Heterogeneous Agent Teams. in I Lynce, N Murano, M Vallati, S Villata, F Chesani, M Milano, A Omicini & M Dastani (eds), 28th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 25-30 October 2025, Bologna, Italy – Including 14th Conference on Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems (PAIS 2025). Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, vol. 413, IOS Press, pp. 3711-3718, 28th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Bologna, Italy, 25/10/25. https://doi.org/10.3233/FAIA251250

Webb, N, Huang, Z, Milivojevic, S, Baber, C & Hunt, ER 2025, When Robots Say No: Temporal Trust Recovery Through Explanation. in M Staffa, J-J Cabibihan, B Siciliano, SS Ge, L Bodenhagen, A Tapus, S Rossi, F Cavallo, L Fiorini, M Matarese & H He (eds), Social Robotics + AI: 17th International Conference, ICSR+AI 2025, Naples, Italy, September 10–12, 2025, Proceedings, Part I. 1 edn, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 16131, Springer, pp. 424-436, 17th International Conference on Social Robotics, ICSR+AI 2025, Naples, Italy, 10/09/25. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-95-2379-5_29

Aljammaz, K, Baber, C & Kim, H 2024, Evaluating novel technologies through the notion of affording situations. in Contemporary Ergonomics and Human Factors 2024. Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors, Ergonomics & Human Factors 2024, Kenilworth, United Kingdom, 22/04/24. <https://publications.ergonomics.org.uk/uploads/Evaluating-novel-technologies-through-the-notion-of-affording-situations.pdf>

Milivojevic, S, Sobhani, M, Webb, N, Madin, Z, Ward, J, Yusuf, S, Baber, C & Hunt, ER 2024, Swift Trust in Mobile Ad Hoc Human-Robot Teams. in TAS 2024 - Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Trustworthy Autonomous Systems., 16, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Association for Computing Machinery , pp. 1-10, 2nd International Symposium on Trustworthy Autonomous Systems, TAS 2024, Austin, United States, 15/09/24. https://doi.org/10.1145/3686038.3686057

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