Edinburgh Futures Institute

Join us tomorrow for this week's Venture Cafe Edinburgh, featuring Edinburgh Futures Institute's Emily Shipp.

This session looks at 'The Future of Food' and explores what innovation looks like, from lab to field to kitchen. Join researchers, founders and food lovers to explore three layers of change: how we grow food, how we build food businesses, and how we consume food, particularly with the rise of GLP-1 drugs, which are fundamentally rewriting the relationship between people, appetite, and trust.

📆 Thursday 18 June
📌 Edinburgh Futures Institute
🕔 5pm - 8pm
🎟️ Free to attend
🔗 https://edin.ac/4oBbwSq

Don't miss the final day to catch the Body and Space exhibition, in the Anthea Bond Exhibition Room, Edinburgh Futures Institute. This was first displayed on 28 May.

The exhibit showcases student work in Fashion Innovation and Fashion Interior Design, exploring ideas of form, identity and environment - created, integrated and delivered by Edinburgh College of Art staff working from Edinburgh and on campus in Shanghai.

Following the conclusion of Body and Space, our next exhibit, 'a space for encapsulation' is available to view on our large digital screen and features the work of Andrey Chugunov. The project consists of 41 one-minute video loops, each centred around digital artefacts hovering in void-like spaces drawn from the coastal areas of Scotland. Available to view until 31 July.

Read more about the exhibitions: https://edin.ac/3SHKlt2

The latest episode of our Futures Conversations podcast is out now!

🎧 Episode 7 – Liz Grant: Planetary Health

Professor Liz Grant, Chair of Public Health and Development and Assistant Principal for Public Health, discusses her research over the course of her varied career and how real world problems constitute the core of her work in mapping out a better future for our planetary health.

Listen and subscribe now! Available on all major podcast streaming platforms and on our website 👉 Link in bio

Thank you to everyone who joined us in person and online for our first Future University event at Edinburgh Futures Institute last night! Huge thank you to our event speaker, Beth Simone Noveck, and our event chair, Oliver Escobar, for presenting such an inspiring and important conversation on the civic role of the university in an age of democratic uncertainty and rapid technological change.

The recording of the event will be available on our website shortly.

Our Future University events programme will continue on 17-18 September 2026, so save those dates! Full session details, speaker information, and booking links will be announced in mid-June.

Subscribe to our newsletter to get updates 👉 https://efi.ed.ac.uk/news/join-our-mailing-list/

We're going live in 30 mins! Join Beth Simone Noveck in conversation with Oliver Escobar for a timely exploration of the civic role of the university in an age of democratic uncertainty and rapid technological change.

Livestream link 👉 https://edin.ac/4syWUmT

Join us at the Meadows Festival this weekend!

Pop into our stall in the Community Area and meet staff and students from Edinburgh Futures Institute and members of the University’s Edinburgh Local team! Find out how we support local communities and discover some of our research with fun hands-on activities.

🗓️Saturday 6 June 🕛 10am – 5pm
🗓️Sunday 7 June 🕛 11am – 5pm
📍The Meadows, Melville Drive, Edinburgh, EH9 1JU

Activities are free, open to all and available on a drop-in basis. See you there!

📷 Andrew Perry

The University of Edinburgh | Edinburgh Local

⭐ EFI House: Building connection, community and conversations ⭐

Earlier this month, Edinburgh Futures Institute hosted an EFI House event which brought together current students, alumni and members of our ecosystem for an afternoon of insights on unconventional career journeys.

Speakers Morgan Walker (Innovation Associate, Former Design Director at LEGO), Dr Katherine Gunderson DBA (CEO, Grand Bequest), and Chris Chapman (CEO, Stretchsense) shared bespoke advice and candid accounts of their professional paths.

Find out more about the event and EFI House 👉 https://efi.ed.ac.uk/efi-house-build-conection-community-and-conversations/

The Centre for Investing Innovation, based at Edinburgh Futures Institute, invites you to this upcoming Prominent Scholars Lecture with Jacob Choi, co-founder and CEO of LinqAlpha.

⭐ Prominent Scholars Lecture with Jacob Choi – A Portfolio of AI Agents: From Asset Specialists to Cross-Asset Intelligence in Institutional Investment Research
🗓️ Thursday, 11 June, 10AM - 12PM
📍2.35, Edinburgh Futures Institute and online (MS Teams)
🎟️ Register now: https://edin.ac/4tUykxi

The event is open to the public, university students, researchers, and professionals working across financial services, fintech, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and data.

Choi’s talk, “A Portfolio of AI Agents: From Asset Specialists to Cross-Asset Intelligence in Institutional Investment Research,” looks at a major change happening in how large investment organisations do research.

Only one week to go before the first event of our Future University events programme!

Join Professor Beth Simone Noveck, former US deputy chief technology officer and the first state chief AI strategist under President Barack Obama, for a timely exploration of the civic role of the university in an age of democratic uncertainty and rapid technological change.

⭐ Beth Simone Noveck: Civic University – Democracy, AI, and the Public Imagination
🗓️ 2 June 2026, 6PM – 7:15 PM BST
📍Edinburgh Futures Institute and online
🎟️ https://edin.ac/4syWUmT

Beth Simone Noveck will be in conversation with Professor Oliver Escobar, Chair of Public Policy and Democratic Innovation at the University of Edinburgh.