LAURA HERMAN

Head of AI Research
at Adobe

PhD researcher at Oxford University's Institute of Internet


SELECTED SPEAKING TOPICS:

Emerging Technologies + Creativity
Artificial Intelligence
Generative AI: Is It Creative?
Changing Roles of Artists & Creatives
Impacts of AI on the Global South
Inclusive + Ethical Approaches to AI 
Transparency, Accountability, and Authenticity

Laura Herman is not your typical researcher. Straddling roles as an academic at Oxford and a business leader at Adobe, she makes cutting-edge research insights tangible and actionable for her audiences. Laura’s expertise lies in how emerging technologies are shaping human creativity, which determines the future of innovation. As the Head of AI Research at Adobe, Laura is in the room where decisions are made about the future of creative work. And as a doctoral researcher at Oxford University, she is collecting and analysing the data that reveals how, exactly, AI is changing creativity.  

Furthermore, Laura is a creative herself, having exhibited projects at the Tate and Ars Electronica. She has even spent time working alongside one of the most famous living artists of our time, Olafur Eliasson, as his “Researcher in Residence.” Recently, the Serpentine Galleries asked Laura to influence the art world’s approach to emerging technologies by contributing to their Future Art Ecosystems report. Indeed, Laura’s curatorial and research work has been covered by reputable media outlets such as the BBC, Forbes, Artnet, New Scientist, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal. 

Through her thought leadership, Laura uplevels the voices of historically marginalised communities—particularly those of the Global South. Laura advocates for a radically inclusive, ethical, and transparent approach to emerging technologies, sharing both the ethical policies and technological solutions that her team has developed to mitigate harmful outcomes. In fact, both Arts Council England and the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport have consulted Laura on policies to ethically protect creativity in the age of AI. Charitably, Laura sits on the Boards of Trustees for two UK arts organisations that aim to enhance the accessibility of creative skill-building.

As a keynote speaker to esteemed audiences across the world, Laura unravels the complexity of new technologies using easy-to-understand language and compelling visual examples. At the same time, she is uniquely positioned to surface intricacies and nuances that pique the interest of sophisticated audiences. Beyond simply revealing changes, Laura provides her audiences with calls to action and step-by-step frameworks that will shape how they handle these changes for themselves, their teams, and their organisations. 

Selected Awards

  • United States Fulbright Research Award 

  • UK Arts & Humanities Research Council Fellowship 

  • Zonta International Women in Technology Award 

  • Dieter Schwarz-Oxford Internet Institute AI & Work Fellowship

  • Webby Award: Creative Production App People’s Voice Winner 

  • George A. Miller Princeton University Prize in Cognitive Science


Thought Pieces

Past talks

  • AnswerLab’s Humans of Research Hive 

  • White House Women in STEM Roundtable 

  • Talk & Workshop at 99U Conference

  • MIT’s Media in Transition Conference 

  • Adobe MAX

  • Princeton University Arts Department

  • Sorbonne Neurohumanities Conference 

  • Workshop Co-Host at the International Conference of Computational Creativity 

  • Closing Keynote at Inclusive Work & the Platform Economy Conference 

  • San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation 

  • Augmented World Expo 

  • Talk & Workshop at OpenIDEO 

  • Talk & Workshop at Adobe Photoshop

  • Creativity & Cognition Conference

  • New Social Entanglements: Mixed Reality

  • Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting 

  • Synesthesia & Cross-Modal Perception International Conference