Fahad Zia

Part of the Rising Stars 30 — a list of the UK's most talented young tech professionals in 2025

Growing up in a household where his father pioneered machine learning research in the early 2000s, Fahad was immersed in the world of AI long before it became mainstream. The course was set.

Now lead ML engineer at scent tech company Hynt, his work has spanned cybersecurity, sustainability, healthcare and creative technology. In a previous post at BT, Fahad conceived and led SANTA, a semi-supervised anomaly detection system now deployed with the Ministry of Defence. In another project he spearheaded Navitas, BT’s energy optimisation model, uncovering £4 million in billing discrepancies and winning the 2024 AI Sustainability Award.

Fahad has had papers published by IEEE and Springer, a UK patent, and recognition at BCS-SGAI.

He says he is most excited by self-supervised learning and neuromorphic computing, which “promise to revolutionise AI’s adaptability and efficiency.”