Meet the AI Gala Team

  • Roxana Akhmetova

    AI Gala Founder & Chair. OxAI board member.

    Roxana is a doctoral student at the University of Oxford, a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar and a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellow.

    Her research is focused on AI policy & governance.

    Roxana is also a past president of the Oxford AI Society and a current board member.

    She has presented on the impact of AI in law and bureaucratic processes at the International Bar Association in Miami and at the Family Law Conference in Cape Town.

    Roxana holds an MSc from Oxford, an MA from Canada, and a BA from Canada.

  • Ivan Vasenov

    President, Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society

    Ivan is a final year student at the University of Oxford.

  • Dr Rodrigo Mendoza Smith

    AI Gala Advisor and OxAI board member

    Founder & CEO, Quira

    Rodrigo is the founder and CEO of Quira, a monetisation layer on top of GitHub that semantically matches developers to paid contribution opportunities in open source.

    Rodrigo earned a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Oxford, where he focused on designing numerical algorithms for compressed sensing and topological data analysis. Following his time at Oxford, Rodrigo worked as a data scientist at multiple investment funds in London, where he developed models for equity trading and algorithmic deal sourcing. Prior to founding Quira, Rodrigo served as Visiting Professor in Applied Mathematics at ITAM in Mexico City. In 2016, Rodrigo co-founded the Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society (oxai.org), where he currently serves as a board member.

The event is organised by the Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society

The Oxford AI Society is a student-led society based at the University of Oxford, aiming to educate, promote, connect and innovate in artificial intelligence

Embedded in the University of Oxford, the society’s mission is to provide a platform for the interaction of researchers, students, and professionals interested in Artificial Intelligence. We aim to be a catalyser for debate, learning and development of AI technology and philosophy.

Learn more about OxAI by visiting us our website, on Instagram, LinkedIn, and on X.