Karen Rafferty

I provide international research leadership in personalised AI-informed visualisation for effective decision-making, operating across research, industrial translation, and funding systems. I have published a corpus of 125+ publications, in leading international journals and conferences. 

I have supervised 14 completed PhD students, currently supervise 7 PhD students.

I currently hold PI leadership of the PwC Advanced Research Centre (£3.3M QUB share), CI of the EPSRC Platform Grant REID (£3.6M QUB share), CI and International Advisory Board Chair of BBSRC NILAB (£3.5M QUB share), and CI on the Horizon Europe HARMONICA consortium (£846k QUB share). These awards form a coherent, sustained funding trajectory centred on AI-enabled decision-making, industrial translation, and multi-national collaboration, with continued success following delivery of earlier major awards.  Beyond grant leadership, I hold trusted senior roles within European research funding systems, serving as Vice-Chair of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions evaluations and as an expert reviewer of funded Horizon Europe projects and large-scale consortia. These invited roles reflect recognition of my academic judgement, international authority, and influence in shaping research agendas beyond Queen’s University Belfast.

My main teaching interests within the School are in the subject areas of Engineering Entrepreneurship and Virtual & Augmented Reality.