Dr Stephan Guttinger

I am a philosopher of science with a background in biochemistry. My research focuses on knowledge-generation in the contemporary life sciences, with a particular focus on how scientists produce reliable and trustworthy data in different experimental settings. I am particularly interested in how automation is changing the way we do science.

In 2025 I received a Leverhulme Research Leadership Award for the project "Agents that can err: building the foundations for autonomous AI Scientists". This 4-year project (start September 2026) will bring together expertise in philosophy, computer science and the natural sciences to develop the conceptual framework and the analytic tools needed to critically assess the error-reasoning ability of AI systems and thus lay the foundations for the reliable and trustworthy development of powerful new AI scientists.

Personal website: www.guttinger.co.uk

Biography:

I was born and raised in Zurich, Switzerland. I studied biology at the ETH Zurich, where I also did my PhD and a post-doc in the lab of Ulrike Kutay in the Biochemistry Department. After almost a decade at the bench, I changed my field of research to philosophy of science. This new trajectory eventually led me to my current post at the University of Exeter. Before coming to Exeter I also worked as a guest teacher at the London School of Economics and as a Teaching Fellow in the Philosophy department at Durham University.