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Cathy is co-founder & Academic Director of GDI Hub and the Centre for Digital Language Inclusion. Cathy leads the Innovation Cluster and the Data and Evidence cluster of the flagship AT2030 programme. Cathy leads the innovation work of GDI hub, including the imagination and initiation of Innovate Now and the AT Impact Fund. Cathy contributed to the WHO-UNICEF Global Report on Assistive Technology as an author and via membership of the Expert Advisory Panel. Cathy currently sits on the EPSRC Strategic Advisory Team for Healthcare Technology, and the WHO Technical Advisory Group for Assistive Technology. At UCL, Cathy is Prof. Interaction Design & Innovation at the world-leading UCL Interaction Centre, led the design of the MSc Disability Design & Innovation and is co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Assistive Technology. Cathy's team at UCL also develops novel technologies for disabled people in the UK and globally. It is currently investigating the role of future technologies, such as AI, haptics and mobile, in solving major global priorities of poverty and inclusion.

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Dr Richard Cave is the Co-director of the Centre for Digital Language Inclusion (CDLI) and a certified Speech and Language Therapist. His PhD and other research focuses on the lived experience of people living with speech change when using AI-driven speech recognition technology and how it may help them to be better understood in everyday conversation. Richard has 18 years clinical experience working with communities at risk of speech change and loss, including progressive, acquired and congenital conditions. He is a national advisor to Royal College of Speech and Language Therapist in the UK and recent recipient of the Allied Professional award from the International Alliance of ALS/Motor Neurone Disease. Between 2019-2024 Richard worked with Google Research on the Euphonia and Project Relate programs, focusing on speech recognition technology for those with 'non-standard' speech.

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Gifty Ayoka is a dedicated speech and language therapist and CDLI’s lead of community engagement, Africa. She is also an assistant lecturer at the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), training the next generation of Ghana’s speech and language therapists. She brings extensive experience in working with both children and adults to enhance their communication abilities and improve their overall quality of life.
Her work is grounded in a deep commitment to inclusion, disability rights, and accessibility, especially within underrepresented communities. Gifty is a passionate advocate who strives to ensure that individuals with communication difficulties have equal opportunities to thrive. Her efforts span direct therapy, the development and application of technological solutions, and contributions to policy initiatives that promote communication equity. She is also a co-author of the research study titled “Enhancing Communication Equity: Evaluation of an Automated Speech Recognition Application in Ghana,” which explores innovative approaches to
improving communication accessibility.

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Currently, Gifty is part of a pioneering research team collecting voice data from individuals with speech impairments/non-standard speech in diverse African languages. This important work aims to support the development of AI datasets in local languages.

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Dr Giulia is a Professor of Inclusive Technology and Collective Engagement at the Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security (UA Ruhr) and the Faculty of Informatics at the University of Duisburg Essen in Germany. The focus of my research is the design, development and evaluation of technology that addresses the needs and priorities of disabled individuals and other marginalized users in both the Global South and Global North to ensure more equitable access to opportunities.

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Katrin is AI Tech Lead at GDIHub's Centre for Digital Language Inclusion, working to ensure that voice technology serves everyone, regardless of their speech patterns. Katrin holds a PhD in Computer Science from Technical University of Dortmund and has 15+ years of experience across academia and industry in both AI applications and applied research, including amongst others building the automated classification and keywording system for the German National Library’s electronic catalogue and the European Patent Office, Recommendation Systems at OpenTable, Neural Machine Translation at Google Translate, LLM steering at Google's Responsible AI Research team, and leading ASR research efforts on non-standard speech within Project Euphonia.

Brian Mwenda is the Founder and CEO of Hope Tech and Senses Hub. He has an engineering background building assistive technology for people with disabilities, with a focus on mobility and navigation for blind and visually impaired users.

He leads the development of The Sixth Sense, a wearable mobility and hazard-detection system that combines sensors, haptics, and audio feedback to support independent navigation. The product has been developed over several years through iterative engineering and user testing across the UK, Africa, Europe, and Australia.

Hope Tech operates in the UK, Kenya, and Austria, focusing on assistive technology research, product development, and distribution of the Sixth Sense mobility aid. Alongside this, Brian co-founded Senses Hub in Nairobi, a research, innovation and distribution company that supports the design, testing, and deployment of disability-focused technologies across Africa.

His work includes large-scale accessibility research, inclusive AI programs, and non-standard speech technology initiatives delivered in partnership with universities, governments, and disability organizations.

Brian is a Forbes Under 30 Europe 2025 honouree, an alumnus of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, and an alumnus of Innovate Now by the Global Disability Innovation Hub.

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Naomi joined GDI Hub in 2020, bringing experience overseeing a portfolio of community and international development projects across east and southern Africa. Her role covers programme design, monitoring, learning and evaluation, portfolio coordination and stakeholder engagement. Naomi leads on the delivery of the AT2030 programme, and provides programme oversight across GDI Hub's portfolio, with responsibility for delivery quality, stakeholder coordination and team management.

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Chintan Ghate is a software engineer and researcher based in Vadodara, India, working at the intersection of accessible technology, digital healthcare, and user-centric design. During his tenure at Google, he contributed to healthcare research projects on multiple sclerosis and maternal health, and worked on speech accessibility through Project Relate. At CDLI he is currently focused on improving speech recognition for dysarthric speakers through his work on Project Euphonia.