Professor Melissa Terras MBE FREng is Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage in Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. She previously directed UCL Centre for Digital Humanities. Focussing on advanced digitisation of cultural heritage, she holds a doctorate in Engineering from the University of Oxford, and is a founding Director of READ-COOP, delivering Transkribus, the AI-powered platform for text recognition of historical documents. Between 2022-24, Melissa was Director of Creative Informatics, the award-winning AHRC Creative Cluster supporting digital innovation in the cultural and creative industries, leading to the spin-out of 47 companies. From 2024-2026, Terras was the Edinburgh Lead for the UKRI CoSTAR (Convergent Screen Technologies and performance in Realtime) Network. She is currently Edinburgh Lead for the EU Horizon funded INFINITY project, building new tools to enhance cultural heritage digital object management. Melissa is Expert Advisor to the UK Government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and sits on the Scottish Government’s Technology Council. With over £55m worth of research funding, she has authored over 150 academic articles and 12 books. She was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2024, and an MBE for Services to Digital Humanities in the 2025 New Year’s Honours List.