For the 2025 Annual Digital Hub Lecture, Dr Oiwi Parker Jones discusses the promises and challenges of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) that can restore communication to profoundly paralysed patients.

Oiwi is a Hugh Price Fellow in Computer Science at Jesus College, and a Principal Investigator at the Oxford Robotics Institute (based in the Department of Engineering Science) where he leads the Parker Jones Neural Processing Lab (PNPL).

His team weaves together the research threads of computer science, neuroscience, language and speech, with the aim of creating safe and effective BCIs that can help paralysed patients to communicate when they are unable to speak or gesture effectively themselves.

Utilising the power of modern machine learning is key to the success of speech BCIs. In this lecture Oiwi will describe his lab’s initial research breakthroughs using large-scale machine-learning methods, and the challenges that lie ahead in his quest to help paralysed patients to communicate again.

Doors open at 6pm with drinks reception. Talk begins at 6.30pm, followed by Q&A.