Looking back on 2025, we’re excited to highlight the achievements of one of our Horizon CDT alumni.
Horizon CDT alumna Vanja Ljevar, who graduated in 2021 with a PhD thesis titled Exploring the impact of socio-cognitive factors on adherence to asthma medication using traditional mixed methods and machine learning, had an amazing year!
Vanja is the Chief Data Scientist and Co-Founder of Kubik Intelligence, a data psychology and behavioural analytics consultancy she launched four years ago, and she also joined Latenta as Chief Data Scientist. Over the past year, she led groundbreaking projects across real estate, luxury, jewellery and retail, applying data psychology to uncover behavioural drivers of value, trust and decision-making to increase revenue.
Alongside her industry work, Vanja organised Game Changer London – a flagship conference on AI – with many CDT students and alumni attending and contributing to its delivery. She continues to serve as a Board Member at the University of Nottingham Business School, where she is also a guest lecturer and supervisor on the MSc Business Analytics programme.
She capped off 2025 by delivering the Winter Graduation commencement address for the Schools of Computer Science, Mathematics, Pharmacy and Physics at the University of Nottingham.
Vanja has started 2026 with the launch of Pebble Gifts, a consumer AI app that uses data psychology, values and personality signals to recommend meaningful gifts. Pebble turns emotional data into insight, helping people give gifts that say ‘I get you’
A brilliant example of how Horizon CDT alumni continue to turn research into real-world impact.
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