Rayo VerweIJ

he/they · /rah-yo ver-wai/
A headshot of Rayo smiling at the camera

is a PhD researcher at the University of Edinburgh

and a mentor at and trustee of Prewired

working on 🧒 young people's critical understanding of new technologies like ⚙️ AI through designing and 🛠️ building their own tools

📧 Get in touch: rayo [dot] verweij [at] ed [dot] ac [dot] uk

Recently...

🔎
March 2026

Running “INFERENCE INTERFERENCE”, a series of workshops at youth clubs and schools, demystifying how AI chatbots generate their responses.

📢
October 2025

Recruiting high schools in/around Edinburgh for research into AI literacy through “AI design clubs” that I will run! See the poster for details.

About

I am a doctoral researcher at the UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing at the School of Informatics of the University of Edinburgh. I am supervised by Prof Fiona McNeill, Dr Cara Wilson, and Dr Valentina Andries and affiliated with Design Informatics, the Children, Interaction, and Design Research Cluster, and the Centre for Technomoral Futures.

Before starting the PhD, I was the chief technology officer of Voxsio, building ethical and engaging digital health apps in partnership with NHS Grampian.

Outside of work, I am a duty mentor at Prewired, a free Edinburgh coding club for under-19s, as well as the Projects Officer of our Board of Trustees. Among other things, I run our FIRST LEGO League programme during the school year.

I'm originally from Eindhoven, the Netherlands; daar brandt nog licht!

🎤
23 June 2025

Spoke at the doctoral consortium of the ACM Interaction Design and Children conference in Reykjavík, Iceland! Read the extended abstract.

🎤
5 June 2025

Participated in a panel discussion on participatory approaches in NLP at the CDT Partner Summit.

🔎
February–March 2025

Ran a workshop at 7 Scottish and Dutch primary schools, asking students to design what they imagined AI at school would look like in the future. All their designs are showcased here!

📢
September 2024

Started a PhD at the new Centre for Doctoral Training in Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing at the University of Edinburgh!

🏆
June 2024

Received a Digital Xtra grant to set up a FIRST LEGO League programme with two teams at Prewired, together with Rikki Guy and Athina Frantzana.

🎤
28 March 2023

Hosted a workshop named Building Inclusive AI: Language, Dialect, and Diversity at the Scottish AI Summit in Glasgow.

🏆
13 June 2022

With Voxsio, won £50K to develop the business at the Scottish EDGE pitching competition!

📢
September 2021

Joined Voxsio, a small Edinburgh start-up, working in partnership with NHS Grampian to develop a digital health intervention for young people with functional gastrointestinal disorders.

🎓
August 2021

MSc Cognitive Science from the University of Edinburgh. Read my dissertation, An Online Research Environment for Behavioural Studies into Reinforcement Learning.

🎓
May 2020

BA Liberal Arts and Sciences from Bard College, NY, with a major in Computer Science and a concentration in Mind, Brain, and Behaviour.

🧑‍💻
March 2020

Built TacoTab, a web app for tabulating World Schools-style debating tournaments, for the Bard Debate Union—it still holds up quite well!