Professor Arunangsu Chatterjee

Profile

As Dean of Digital Transformation for the University I am responsible for driving forward the delivery of the University’s Digital Transformation strategy, with a particular focus on leading change programmes and projects in digital education, digital research and digital operations areas. I have academic responsibility for the development of relevant digital transformation programmes, securing academic buy-in to change initiatives and leading the delivery of initiatives through project activity into business-as-usual activities.

As an academic leader, I am known for building inclusive, high-trust cultures; for translating emerging technologies and data strategy into measurable educational, research and organisational impact; and for navigating complex governance structures with a values-led, collaborative style. I combine strategic vision with hands-on delivery across three connected domains. The first is institutional digital and organisational transformation at scale benchmarked against relevant higher education maturity frameworks. The second is research and education leadership, underpinned by a competitively won portfolio exceeding £14m from funders including UKRI and the European Commission, alongside prior responsibility for online education and curriculum innovation including partnerships with OPM and contributions to TEF Gold outcomes. The third is highly complex board-level governance, most recently as Non-Executive Director at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust (£1b) and, until March 2026, as Vice Chair and Non-Executive Director of the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (£7b).

Responsibilities

• Dean of Digital Transformation

Research interests

My research and innovation interests sit at the intersection of education and health technologies, with a particular focus on how rapidly evolving digital technologies (Industry 4.0) support capacity and capability building within complex organisations such as universities and the NHS, using Quadruple Helix and innovation-diffusion models. I am especially interested in how AI, robotics and extended reality can be responsibly leveraged to enable more personalised, inclusive and sustainable models of learning and care. My research programme has attracted over £14m in competitive funding from national and international sources. I currently lead or co-lead our institutional AI XR and robotics strategic roadmap at Leeds, integrating explainable AI, simulation and extended reality to support research, education and operations. I am also the co-investigator on a sector-leading Research England initiative (AIRDN+) to upskill the postgraduate research ecosystem in the use and application of AI.

Key strands of my work include:

• Investigating how digital technologies enable capacity building and knowledge mobilisation within distributed learning and healthcare ecosystems.
• Enhancing the adoption and diffusion of disruptive and decentralised technologies to support scalable, context-sensitive and ethically grounded innovation in health and education.
• Addressing persistent evaluation challenges in digitally mediated and increasingly distributed technological environments, particularly around impact, engagement and equity.
• Exploring the broader social, cultural and behavioural dimensions of digital transformation — how institutional, community and individual contexts shape technology use and acceptance.

This work is inherently interdisciplinary and applied, bringing together partners from academia, industry, government and civil society to co-create solutions that are both locally relevant and globally informed, and it directly informs my leadership of institutional digital strategy, pedagogic innovation and organisational change.

Research Supervision Interest in Digital Health / eHealth, Human-Computer Interaction & Digital Education.

• Digital Health and eHealth
• Digital Education
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Healthy Ageing
• Developing and sustianing Innovation ecosystems

Selected grants & contracts

• AIRDN+ – Research England £3.4M (2025-29)
• XR Evaluation Perinatal and Primary Care – Health Education England £120k (2023)
• Intergenerational co-creation of novel technologies to reconnect digitally excluded people with community & cultural landscapes in coastal economies – EPSRC £1M (2022-25)
• RegsWizard - Simplifying the Complex World of Medical Device Regulation – SBRI £438k (2021-22)
• Generating Older Active Lives Digitally (GOALD) - ESRC £1.9M (2021-24)
• Transitions Service - SBRI – Healthy Ageing Social Ventures feasibility studies £49k (2022)
• The impact of a digital system on the monitoring and self- management of non-motor symptoms in People with Parkinson’s – Parkinsons UK – £190k (2021-23)
• E-health Productivity and Innovation in Cornwall & Scilly - Phase 2 (EU ERDF), £4M (2020-23)
• Healthy Ageing through Innovation in Rural Europe (Interreg, EU), £4.5M (2020-22) [£440k]
• Evaluating online consultations in Devon and Cornwall (SW ASHN), £75k (2019)
• E-health Productivity and Innovation in Cornwall & Scilly (EU ERDF), £2.7M (2017-20) [£400k]
• Using immersive game-enhanced virtual reality for healthcare and community education in Sierra Leone, THET, £136k (2015)
• Developing Distributed Simulation for IPC training in Liberia, MMEI, £64 (2015)
• Immersive Dental Education using Dome technology, Wrigley Foundation, £104k (2013)
• Patient and Public Involvement in Regulation, RST, Department of Health. £20k (2013)

Current postgraduate researchers

• Raul Dena Medecigo
• Inocencio Maramba

Qualifications

• PhD
• PCHE
• MSc
• BEng

Professional memberships

• Fellow - Higher Education Academy
• Fellow - British Computer Society
• Member - Association of Learning Technology, UK
• Fellow - Royal Society of Arts

Student education

Teaching interests focused on the following areas: 

• Digital Transformation
• Technology Enhanced Learning and Simulation 
• Health Informatics & Digital Health
• Research Methods and Ethics
• Human-Computer Interaction 

Research groups and institutes

• Leeds Institute of Health Sciences
• Leeds Institute of Medical Education

Current postgraduate researchers

• Raul Enrique Dena Medecigo