Dr Zakos is an Honorary Professor at the School of Software. His main role is to engage with staff and students to inspire, supervise and facilitate high end innovation through entrepreneurial and commercial activities at the school, including collaboration with industry partners.

A technologist with an entrepreneurial drive, his career contributions range from research through to strategic business development, leading the innovation of emerging technologies around the world. John thrives on seeing new ideas spawned in the research lab actually make it into the "real world" as mainstream applications that have a positive impact on society.

Co-founding Artificial Intelligence (AI) company Cognea in 2005, the company became recognised as a world leader in delivering virtual human solutions before being acquired by IBM in 2014. As the Program Director for Virtual Agent technologies at IBM Watson Group until 2019, John played a key role in developing the next-generation of cognitive computing alongside colleagues at IBM. Dr Zakos holds a PhD in AI and has published his work internationally. He also holds numerous patents and has given invited talks at forums such as TED.