Dr Melanie Garson is a global educator, speaker and policy advisor specialising at the intersection of disruptive tech and international relations and security.  She is an Associate Professor in International Security in the Department of Political Science at University College London where she has been teaching for 15  years across a range of courses on international security, defence, diplomacy and conflict resolution.  She currently teaches her flagship course “From Cyberwarfare to Robots: The Future of Conflict in the Digital Age” that she founded in 2016 that examines the nexus of disruptive tech and building defence and resilience. She also teaches courses on International Negotiation and Tech Diplomacy, as well as problem-solving for policymaking at HM Treasury.   In her policy advisory work she provides practical insights and thought leadership for policymakers across the full spectrum of  cyber policy, tech geopolitics, and defence innovation challenges.  Having spent four years  as a Senior Advisor at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, she has advised leaders globally on cyber resilience policy, the geopolitics of AI, compute, quantum, astropolitics, data governance, and navigating the rise of tech companies as geopolitical actors. She also contributed to Review and Challenge of the recent UK Security Defence Review following her work on Reimagining Defence and is active in connecting between defence tech ecosystems.