6 May 2025

Prof Gustavo Sudre introduces the work of the King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the upcoming King's Festival of Artificial Intelligence.

Please can you introduce yourself and your role?

I’m a Professor of Genomic Neuroimaging and AI, and the Rosetrees Pears Chair of Bioinformatics at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London. I also sit on the Steering Group of the King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

My work bridges neuroscience, genetics, and child and adolescent mental health, with a focus on how we can use large-scale data to better understand—and ultimately improve—outcomes for young people with neurodevelopmental conditions.

Tell us more about your research?

My research focuses on improving how we understand and treat mental health conditions in children and adolescents, particularly conditions like OCD and ADHD. These conditions can vary widely from one child to another. I’m especially interested in moving beyond traditional diagnostic categories to identify more meaningful subgroups—children who might respond differently to treatments or follow different developmental trajectories.

This is part of a broader push toward personalised psychiatry—the idea that we should tailor treatment to the individual, rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach. That means looking not just at a diagnosis but a child’s unique profile across multiple levels: brain imaging, genetic data, clinical symptoms, and cognitive functioning.

To do this, I use artificial intelligence and machine learning to combine these different types of data and find patterns that can help us predict outcomes, detect early signs of risk, and ultimately match children with the right interventions at the right time. The goal is to make treatment more precise, timely, and effective, based on real biological insight rather than trial and error.

How can AI improve outcomes for patients?

AI is transforming many areas of healthcare by helping us make sense of complex data and uncover patterns that aren’t always visible to the human eye. It’s especially useful in areas where diagnoses are based on a mix of symptoms rather than clear-cut biological tests, like mental health.

In child and adolescent psychiatry, treatment decisions often rely on broad diagnostic categories that don’t capture the complete picture of a young person’s needs. AI allows us to move beyond that by integrating data from different sources, like brain scans, genetics, and cognitive testing, to build a more nuanced understanding of each child.

For example, two children might both be diagnosed with OCD, but have very different underlying brain and cognitive profiles. One might respond well to cognitive-behavioral therapy, while another might need medication or a combination of approaches. AI can help identify these differences early, so we can tailor treatment more precisely and avoid the frustrating—and sometimes harmful—process of trial and error.

This not only improves outcomes, but also reduces the emotional and financial burden on families. When a child is struggling, every delay or ineffective treatment takes a toll. By helping clinicians make better-informed decisions sooner, AI can support faster access to the right care, more stable progress, and a better quality of life for both children and their families.

What is the King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence and its priorities? 

The King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence brings together the diverse community in AI at King’s College London. The distinctiveness of King’s College London in our interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity provides a context that is hard to match and which is increasingly recognised as the crucial pre-requisite for success in AI.

AI work lies in every faculty across King’s College London, with activity spanning core AI, applications, and societal implicants. The King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence creates a coherent and visible presence for AI, to support networking and collaboration across the community and provide a point of coordination within the college for external partnerships and collaborations. 

We’re coming up to The King's Festival of Artificial Intelligence 2025  – can you give us a preview of the event?  

The King’s Festival of Artificial Intelligence is the flagship annual event delivered by The King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence. The 2025 event is running from Tuesday 20 to Saturday 24 May and will explore the latest developments in AI, including on education, healthcare, the creative industries, sustainability and business.

King’s College London experts and external guests will tackle the world’s most urgent problems such as climate change and social equality and explore how AI is changing some of our most human impulses. The festival events are free and open to all, you can explore the full programme and click through to register for specific events. I’ll be speaking on Thursday 22 May on ‘Revolutionising Child Mental Health Treatment’, you can read more and register for the event here.

Find out more about The King’s Festival of Artificial Intelligence.