Dr Thomas Hudson

Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science

What do you do?

I completed both my undergraduate degree and PhD in Durham, working on a wide range of areas including cybersecurity and machine learning.

How are you involved in this area of science? 

I focus on innovative ways of using Large Language Models (LLMs) such at chatGPT to solve problems in veterinary medicine and healthcare. I'm currently working on extracting information from discussions between vets about problematic animals they're treating.

What do you love about this topic?

LLMs such as chatGPT can be used for so much more than just "Generate me a report on XYZ", or answering simple questions. When used in creative ways, they can help extract meaning out of the vast quantities of data we produce in our daily lives.

How does this work deliver real-world impact?

We should be able to detect new trends in pet diseases. If vets suddenly start reporting new, unusual symptoms we should be able to discover these patterns in the data. We're also providing tools so that people can describe what's going on with their cat or dog and discover similar cases to what treatments worked previously. This should lead to more informed treatments These methods can also be applied to human medicine.