Professor Emilio Porcu

Emilio Porcu is a Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, and a Visiting Fellow at ADIA Lab, where he plays a leading role in interdisciplinary research spanning statistics, machine learning, and data science. He has held senior academic positions across Europe, the UK, Latin America, and the Middle East, including Chair of Spatial Statistics at Newcastle University and Chair Professorships at Trinity College Dublin.

At ADIA Lab, Emilio contributes to the Climate Science vertical as co-leader of the Climate Networks and Climate & Economy research groups, in collaboration with the University of Santiago de Compostela and the University of Granada.

His research focuses on stochastic processes, spatial and spatio-temporal statistics, kernel methods, and the mathematical foundations of data science and AI. He has made foundational contributions to covariance theory, Gaussian random fields on manifolds and networks, and kernel constructions bridging statistics and machine learning, with recent work emphasizing robustness, interpretability, and trustworthy AI.

Professor Porcu has authored around 180 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals and is the author of several research monographs. He is an Elected Fellow of the International Statistical Institute and the Bernoulli Society, a recipient of multiple international awards, and serves on the editorial boards of several major journals.