Keynote Speaker - Sundeep Bhandari

Sundeep Bhandari

Chief Digital Innovation Officer // Head of Digital Innovation

National Physical Laboratory, United Kingdom

As society in the 21st century undergoes significant digital transformation it could be considered incumbent upon the metrology community to rise to the emerging challenges this brings.
For many decades we have enabled others (and ourselves) to innovate, invest, make, manufacture, trade and travel through the confidence we provide.
What does this look like in a digital world? What does this mean for us?

This talk makes the case that measurement and metrology are the invisible infrastructure technology that underpin everything from blue sky R&D to commercial activity.
However, the quality infrastructure (that exists for physical assets) is not in place for end to end digital systems, processes and the applications that sit on top of them.
In a world where everything is becoming ‘driven by data, at the speed of AI’, traceability, auditability and uncertainty quantification are critical, especially where there is a high value or business/safety critical decision to be made, even more so if this is done autonomously.
Sunny will share the NPL’s perspectives, approach and activities to start addressing some of this need, describing a journey which started a few years ago. Growing over time NPL has looked at how to take the entire organisation, together, forwards step by step. You will hear about some highlights, challenges and considerations that have been experienced along the way and future directions – setting a high level scene for the subsequent sessions.

Sundeep (Sunny) works at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) the UK's National Measurement Institute, responsible for measurement strategy and delivery in the UK. NPL develops and maintains the national primary measurement standards and is a Public Corporation owned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). Sunny's work focuses on shaping the evolution of physical metrology and measurement into the new digital world, embedding measurement and traceability into processes using digital and data sciences to deliver confidence in the intelligent and effective use of data. NPL's more recent work address' research and development in measurement standards that provide traceability and confidence in end-end digital process', as well as develop the assets required in the future to underpin and enable economies and societies to have confidence in 'data driven decision making at the speed of AI'.
Sunny sits on multiple cross-government and departmental steering boards and coordination groups that cover digital technologies and digital technology standards as well as being a member of several external steering and advisory boards. He has led NPL's involvement in the partnership tasked with establishing the UK Governments AI Standards Hub.